


Morning Glory

by vein



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Koujaku's Bad End, M/M, Mentions of Major Character Death, Mink's Good End, POV First Person, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-16 17:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4634526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vein/pseuds/vein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After destroying his favorite plaything, Desire goes against Aoba's will and sets out for faraway lands to seek out a new toy -- one who, he hopes, will hurt him even better.</p>
<p>A version of Mink's good ending, set in the aftermath of Koujaku's bad ending, from Desire's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When you break a toy that can't be fixed, you set it aside and find a new one. That's how I end up halfway around the world, tracking a man I know nothing about. I've got his scent, and that's enough.

For a while, I play with each thing I meet along the way. There are people on the redeye flights who will bring you drinks if you use your voice to convince them that you've paid. I ask for something with cinnamon. When those seated beside me are clever enough and intrusive enough to translate their speech for me with their Coils, I tell them that it's a good time to take a nap. Then I pick through their purses, wallets, and carry-on bags, thinking of how I would break them.

Although I have Aoba's identification, I risk using Scrap almost constantly so that I don't have to leave his name anywhere. I don't want to be tracked. The tower, the games I played there – those were their own sort of prison.

As I near the end of the road, the people no longer give me the benefit of the doubt. I'm not trusted here. _Good_ , I think. I shouldn't be, and I don't need their help. Signs in store windows flip from open to closed as I pass; silhouettes step out of the road ahead and disappear. Stupid, superstitious assholes. They should know I'm not out for them.

I walk until the blisters on my feet burst, and then I keep on walking. The heat is intensely dry, like an oven, like a mouthful of sand. My skin turns red and peels, and then it's white again. I chip and flake away at the burns, wondering how this body can still behave in such a human way. This body, which I've always lived in but have only just stolen, wasn't made for what I've put it through. There are times when I fear it won't hold up. Old healed wounds pulse and twitch with the pressure of heat and the strain of travel. I can't carry enough water, and it's difficult to find. 

There's a day when I go dizzy and the blue sky spins, whipping the clouds in circles around me, and I stumble over a pothole in the road and go sprawling facedown. Blood's in my mouth, and fragments of teeth, which I spit out before the world grays out, and that's when I hear the voice that's kept itself quiet for weeks. _What are you going to do with him?_

The voice is tired, wary. Which is almost pitiful, but I guess I must be the same. Worse off, really. When Aoba can't do it anymore, when he draws back and fades away, I step up to shield him from what I can. I always have. So I say to him, aloud, “It's none of your business. Go back to sleep.”

He murmurs something before he disappears, but I don't catch it. I wake. There's blood down my front, and a car tire whips past my face without stopping. My heart pounds erratically, and my veins and throat feel dried. Everything I grab when I scramble up tries to scrape at me: gravel, sand, pavement, brush. I catch sight of the car that passed me vanishing up an incline ahead and I follow the line of the road to the mountains beyond, up and up into a haze of air too thin to breathe, all the way up to the brilliant blinding whiteness of the sun, which fills my field of vision completely, and that's when I understand at last that this place is beautiful.

 

* * *

 

The days darken after that. Clouds come in, linger doubtfully, and drift away. In the towns, there are murmurs of rain.

It's cooler at this altitude. There are parched-looking forests and grass in the valleys. I could live for a while up here, but I won't need to. I can smell him on the wind. He's alive, and he's alone. We'll have our own tiny corner of the world, and he'll finish what's been started.

I'd thought at first that everyone who looked vaguely like Mink would know his story, but I was wrong. There are enough people here, and enough variety among them, to fill a few small countries. I start to wonder if Mink isn't truly the last of his kind. So when I can get close enough to someone to force Scrap upon them, I stop looking for memories of tragedy. Instead I search for the shape of his hands, the color of his hair, the placement of his scars. Out of anger, I leave a few roadside gift shop cashiers lying slumped on the floor, but in time I track down what I need.

 

* * *

 

The clouds have grown dark and heavy by the time I slip into the forest. It's night, and unfamiliar creatures sing under a white half-moon, beneath the thick cover of trees. It smells strange here, foreign, because it is. There were no woods like this on Midorijima. 

The grass reaches high and wets the leather of my white boots. It's wrong to wear white here, but it makes me feel at home, makes me feel alive. I am not camouflaged among the trees. I'm bright; I catch the light. I move swiftly but not quietly through the brush. Whatever lives here will know that I'm coming, and know that they haven't seen the likes of me before. This, I think, is how gods were created, how legends were made.

I know that he's out there. The smell of him grows stronger still.

He said once that Aoba and I have two different scents. Aoba smelled like him, of spice, of death. I didn't. I was blank and clean. That's evidence, I think, that I've done as I should. Aoba was not meant for this world. What I've done, how he sank into me, how since then I've held him back – it's the only way I have to protect him.

Mink will be proud.

Each time I think I've found him, I lose sight or scent of him. The days are hot, the nights frigid, and it's hard to know when to sleep. I like the blinding purity of the sun, but that's not when he ventures outdoors. So I huddle against tree trunks and deadfalls by day, and I rise later on to prowl the forest for proof that he's been here, that he'll be back, that I've finally found his home.

On the third day the sky breaks. The clouds are as thick and dark as midnight. Rain pours forth, soaking my hair flat, turning it from colorless to gray. I shed what supplies I still carry. I can move faster without them, and I know that if I don't find him soon, I'll have worse troubles to fear than starving to death.

I think I catch a flash of his hair, and I spring forth like a cat poised for the hunt. The rain won't drive him indoors, and he wouldn't go home anyway, not if he knows I'm on him. I follow him still. He has strength and size, but I'm quick. This time, I keep up with him. I never thought he was gone, not really. Relief washes over me with the rain, but I never, ever thought he'd do what he claimed he planned to do. He's too proud for such a death.

I weave through the trees. Thunder crashes like the world is coming down. He won't wait for me. He knows who I am, and who I'm not. I dash through rivulets of water that soak me past my knees. I could shut my eyes and shove Aoba out, but would I ever drag him back in, if I did? I slip on slick wet leaves and scramble back to my feet; a bird calls in the distance, separated from its flock. It doesn't matter, I don't need him. Mink's love for him, Mink's hope for him, will be enough, will serve me well. I'm counting on that.

I catch him in a clearing where ancient trees have bent and died to make way for saplings that twist in the wind. He stops when he knows he's caught. His eyes flash lightning blue. He's sodden with rain, but so am I, and I lunge forward, wrap my arms around his thick neck. He stinks of it, up close. Of cinnamon, of death. Even water can't wash it from him.

He doesn't push me away. Instead he shoves me hard against the rough bark of the nearest tree. My neck snaps back; my hair is caught and scraped. I bite my lip hard to keep from crying out. I'm smiling, halfway to laughter. This is it, I've got it, I've done it. I fall to the forest floor and land ass-first in the mud. Lightning flashes again, and he's on me, ripping my clothes from me like I'm a doll. There are no gods in this forest, I think. What walks here could never match _him_.

Then I'm naked on the ground, looking up at him. He's neutral, appraising. Dark hair, dark skin, bright eyes. One of his hands could fit the whole way around me, I think. He frowns and traces a bite with his finger, a deep mark that Koujaku left, and rage rises up in me – _that's mine!_ – but I choke it back like I choke back Aoba. The ground quakes with thunder. I look up and see the rain, sharp icy starlit pinpricks coming down at me, around me, through windbent branches, against the black backdrop of the sky. Mink's lips move, but he doesn't speak.

He's in me then, all at once. Hands on hips pulling me up, open, apart. We grind down into the mud. He's not slick enough to get inside, all that wets him is the rain, but that's never deterred him before. A feather hung round his neck brushes my chest. I close my eyes. He's big; I'm full, I'm ready, I've waited for this. I wrap my legs around him. It hurts, but I have practice now. I don't make a sound as I push through the pain.

He always did tell me that I talk too much.

I want to fight so that he'll hurt me, but I can't fight him at all. Even after the months I've spent walking through the arid desert landscape, my strength next to his is like a leaf beside a sequoia. I twist under his weight and don't move an inch. I lash out, but his hands catch me and hold me down. Thumbnails digging into wrists and thighs; now, that's more like it. I want a scar from him, I want, now, to be claimed.

He leans down, chest against mine, and I'm gasping for air. He's _so_ big, too big. I'm rock-hard but he won't touch me there, won't let me touch myself. He's so quiet, but I can hear his low breaths bordering on moans, right up against my ear. He lets up on me long enough to run his fingers through my hair and I reach out (that _hurts_ ) to rake sharp nails down his back, nails that still bear traces of Koujaku's flesh, or, god, I hope they do. Let them mingle, let him bleed. But I only make a shallow scratch before Mink sniffs with derision and holds me back down again.

The rain's gone by the time he comes. Here, halfway to drowning me, then dry. The water beads and evaporates on my skin, chilling me in this day-turned-night, and I shiver, teeth chattering. He pulls out long before I'm done with the way his warmth flows through me, and I'm bare and exposed on my back, open to the woods I'd crashed through without thought. My hair muddied, my clothes ruined, my cock painfully stiff with no relief. Mink sits back on his knees, pulls his clothes up, and watches me reach down to bring myself to a shattered and half-pleasurable finish. I lick up the come from him, off my own hand, as a show. It's bitter and thin. My other hand stays curled into a fist, nails digging into my palm, forming new halfmoon scars. I shudder with the effort, with the release.

 

* * *

 

It's too late to go back, he says. I have no choice but to believe him. He gives me his forest-green overcoat, and I wrap it around me while I sit on the stump of a long-dead tree.

He sparks a fire out of nothing, in spite of the damp foliage and ground. It looks like magic to me, or it would, if I believed in magic. I wonder if I'll get to watch him hunt and kill, but instead, he produces a pouch full of apples, raisins, and almonds. I take some from him hesitantly, my fingertips soft on his rough palm. The fruit and nuts taste hearty, but not sweet. Like him, I think.

The flames cast long flickering shadows that dance at the corners of my eyes. The night is cold, but I lick my dry lips, wanting to get away from the heat. Mink sees me and pushes a thermos of water into my hands. “You're dehydrated. Stupid.”

I don't look at him or thank him, but I take it and drink greedily, letting water splash down my chin. I'm daring him wordlessly to snatch it away, but he lets me drink my fill, and after a while my vision stops swimming. I fling the thermos back at him and he lifts one hand to catch it.

Mink looks a little different now, but I can't figure out why, except that he's removed the heavy shackles he once wore around his wrists. Maybe that's all there is to it. Now that he's free of their weight, it should take less effort for him to move, but he stays still and quiet, cross-legged on the forest floor. He watches the fire without fidgeting or glancing at his Coil, if he's even wearing one.

He looks up and catches me staring. His eyes travel up and down the length of me. His coat covers me from neck to knees, but I've left it unzipped and open. It feels good to let my scars soak in the warmth.

“What did you do to his body?” Mink asks me neutrally, as if he's not surprised at all.

For a second I think he means Koujaku, and I wonder how he knows. But no, of course he means Aoba. “What he wanted me to do,” I snap back. It's true. I am what Aoba wants, like it or not.

Mink makes a small sound of disapproval, but doesn't press further. Instead he says, “And you brought him all this way so that I would hurt him even more?”

I shake my head. It's a slight, diminutive movement, and I wonder when I lost my nerve. But then Mink's lost his too; he hasn't even hit me yet.

“Then why?”

Some part of me, the soft part, the Aoba part maybe, wants to show him. To go to him now, shed his coat, straddle his legs, ease down on his lap. Take his hands and press them to the indentations of my scars. Have him, be had by him, by _anyone_ , again.

“I was bored,” I tell him.

I want to be smacked and sent sprawling, but Mink doesn't even move. He doesn't speak. I meet his flat dark eyes. A laugh bubbles up inside me, and I ask, “Aren't you going to say anything?”

He doesn't reply right away. He takes his pipe from a pocket and toys with it, but doesn't light it. Then he says, “You don't need to be told what you are.”

I smile, though it stings. No, I don't need to be told. Aoba has told me often enough.

I'm sore from fucking, but that aside, this isn't going how I'd planned.

“Get some sleep,” Mink commands, looking away from me. “There's a long walk ahead in the morning.”

Obediently, I lie down in the muddy leaves, like I'm planning on being Mink's docile pet from here on out. I expect it to feel uncomfortable, but the lining of Mink's overcoat keeps me dry. I still lie awake for a while, wondering what he's got in mind for tomorrow – he wouldn't send me away without even trying to wrench me out of Aoba's body, and I think he knows I won't go from this place, or from Aoba, without putting up a fight.

I pull the hood of the coat up around my head and gaze out at Mink. He's still sitting there, unlit pipe in hand, ignoring me. I don't know what he's going to try to do with me, but I know it will be interesting, even fun, to find out.

I hadn't planned on really sleeping, but when tiredness washes over me, I can't find a good reason to resist. I press my lips against a hollow in my hand that Koujaku once carved out with his teeth, and I give myself over to the dark.

 

* * *

 

Everything's wrong in the morning.

The overcast sky at dawn is the shade of filthy ice, and just as frigid. All the warmth has gone out of me. The world is spinning again, dirt over trees over clouds, and I think of crawling toward Mink's thermos to drink more water but I can't stand the thought of something so cold trickling down my throat. My skin feels like a thin sheet of ice that could crack if I pull it too far, but I reach out toward the embers of the fire anyway, grasping around for a rock to warm my hands. I get one, but I drop it, and I can't seem to make my hands work again. Instead I stare at my palm as it reddens, and I wonder why it didn't feel hot enough to burn.

From the opposite side of the fire, Mink rustles around, then curses. I try to look at him, but opening my eyes makes me so nauseous and dizzy that I worry the food and water he gave me last night will come right back up. So I keep them shut and feel him roughly grab my hand, then turn it over and over to examine it. There's pain when his fingers push into the burn. After that, he's gentler. He touches my forehead softly, then he curses again.

He says something I don't understand. I'm not sure if it's because he's speaking in another language while my Coil's off, or if I've just misheard. He gathers me up into his arms and carries me like I sometimes used to carry Ren, like a baby. I don't feel any warmth from him, but then, I never have. The thought makes me laugh.

“Quiet,” he mutters under his breath. I don't keep quiet, though. I keep trying to tell him that I'm so cold, and that if he keeps bumping around like this, I might throw up and wreck all his clothes. The words don't seem to come out the way I want, though. Anyway, he wrecked my clothes too, so then we'd be even. I laugh again, a little, then shiver so hard I bite my tongue.

I wish it would end. I wish I would end. I don't know what's happened to me or where Mink is taking me now. He poisoned me, maybe. I think of the water, the way he pushed it on me, let me drink it all down. He drank too, though. Didn't he?

I bring my hand to my mouth, the way I did last night, to feel the outline of Koujaku's teeth with my lips. I've been trying to forget about him, trying to stop sleeping like that, but I need Koujaku now. He would know what to do, how to warm me. He'd bite me deep, and he'd let the hot blood flow down.

I don't know how long it takes to reach Mink's cabin, but when we get there, I'm stricken by panic. The whole place reeks of death, and I somehow sense that if I let him drag me in there, I won't ever come out. I grab onto the door frame as he carries me by, but my grip is weak and he easily wrenches me free.

But I'm calm, though my legs are kicking, my hands scrambling. This is it. I'll die in Mink's arms as Koujaku died in mine, and I'll take Aoba down with me.

He drops me on the couch and disappears, slamming loudly into the next room. I try to look around but can only make out soft shapes and colors, decorations that seem utterly unlike Mink. I hear the flutter of wings and think I've gone over the edge, then catch a glimpse of pink and remember Tori. I find myself wishing I'd brought Ren.

_Ren?_ Aoba says to me. _What happened to Ren?_

Is that dumb dog all he can think of at a time like this? I want to demand an answer of him, but before I can, Mink's back with a cup of something else he wants to force me to drink. It smells like a heap of rotting herbs, turns my stomach, and will probably kill me besides, but I don't care. There's steam rising off of it, so I pull it out of his hands and drink, and two swallows later it all comes straight back up.

_Do what Mink wants,_ Aoba tells me. _He knows what we need._

“Fuck off,” I say.

Mink takes the words like they're meant for him. He mutters, “Are you _trying_ to die?”

_Yes_ , I want to say, but he's gone again, leaving me splattered in vomit and shaking in his coat. When he comes back he pulls the coat right off me, and god, I don't want to be naked right now. He's big and leaning over me and useless to fight, but I can't just let him do this to me. I bite down hard enough on his arm to break skin, but he acts like he can't even feel it. He just cleans me off with a damp towel, which is cold enough to feel like I'm being pierced with needles of ice. 

_Don't fight it._

Then he wraps his arm around my shoulder and tilts me into a sitting position. He brings another cup of the herbal stuff to my lips. “Small sips,” he commands. “Keep it down.”

I listen, but not for Aoba. Not for Mink. I listen because I'm nude and freezing and so far from home that I don't have another choice, and because I guess he isn't trying to kill me after all, and I'm not sure if that's a shame or a relief. I feel warmer as I drink the stuff down, if not nearly by enough.

Mink doesn't let me go until the cup is drained, and until he's waited a moment to make sure he won't have to clean me up again. Then he settles me back down with a pillow propped beneath my head, and finally, at long last, he drapes a bright patterned blanket over me.

“Thank you,” Aoba says through my mouth.

I don't care, and I don't think Mink even notices. He just grunts in response and disappears again. I think I hear him running a bath, but I'm too worn out for that, too used up. Aoba can take over, see if he can handle this any better than I can, if he's going to be so pushy. Or Mink can prop up our empty shell and try to keep it from drowning. I don't care. I need to sleep.

 

* * *

 

I wake in pitch blackness, drenched in sour sweat.

I stand up, and to my surprise, don't fall immediately back down again. Has my fever broken? I run my hands over the nightstand but don't find a lamp or even a candle. It hurts where I burned my hand on that rock. What a ridiculous thing to do – I must have really been out of it.

Whatever Mink did to me must have helped, although the sharp, astringent taste of his medicine still lingers at the back of my throat. I remember him forcing his warm coat off me, and only then do I realize that I'm dressed now, in clothing that fits me better than it should. Wouldn't anything of Mink's fall right off of me? I touch my arm, my leg, my sides. I'm in my own clothes again, the clothes that Mink ripped from me and left in the dirt, but they're clean and intact.

Am I hallucinating? Caught in a fever-dream?

Am I not in the real world at all, but in Scrap?

My eyes adjust to the light, and I realize that in the distance, something's burning.

A red glow seeps around the edges of the curtain by the bed. The smell of smoke filters in through hairline cracks in the cabin walls. I go to the window and pull the curtain aside, half expecting it to feel hot to the touch, but it feels neither cold nor warm.

At first I think I'm looking out upon a red sunrise, but that's not it. I can't see flames, but the forest glows bright with distant fire. It's like nothing I've ever seen, and I lean against the dusty windowsill, swiping away the corpse of a beetle, to watch for a while. The tall, backlit trees look black. There's a low rumble in the distance, like something roaring. I hadn't known that fire was so hungry.

I tear my eyes away from the window and leave the bedroom. The cabin is dark and deserted. I call out for Mink and Tori, though I know they won't answer. Then, tentatively, I reach for Aoba, but he's silent too. What's happening right now reminds me of when he used Scrap on Koujaku. I don't think he would help me, since his failure back then left him vulnerable enough for me to overtake him, but I could use his advice.

Even if this isn't real, what will happen if the fire catches up to me?

I search the entire cabin, just in case. The rooms are huge, but there aren't many of them. I wonder if the pictures on the walls and the colorful patterned blankets are mementos of Mink's family, keepsakes he'd like me to spare from the flames. That seems like a thought Aoba would have, but he's not there. Anyway, I don't have the time.

I can't find my shoes anywhere, so I sprint from the cabin barefoot. Outside, I look around stupidly, as if I think Mink will have marked me a path. I wish I hadn't been half-conscious when he carried me here, but I spent days tracking him through the forest in my own way before we finally met. I can hardly remember how I did it now. I felt sure that I would find him, and so I did.

Aoba would tell me to head away from the fire, where I'll be safe and can find Mink later. Naturally, I don't do that. I don't know what's east or west or up or down, but I know the fire's to my right, so I walk straight ahead without letting myself think twice about my choice.

I don't feel powerful in the woods anymore. I catch myself fidgeting with the bite on my hand, running my lips over its smooth, shiny ridges. If the old Koujaku were here, he'd be afraid too, but he would say to me, _Ah, but we're together, at least._

If the true Koujaku were here, the one that I killed, he'd pull me down and sink his teeth in. He wouldn't care about the fire. If we were going to burn, we'd burn, and that would be it. He'd put his mouth over mine and suck the smoke right out of me.

He'd tell me – not with words, but with hunger and strong hands – _stay here._

_Stay here._

As the words cross my mind, I swear for a moment that I can hear a voice hiss them in my ear, that I can feel hot breath suddenly on my neck, and I whirl around to see – 

 

* * *

 

“Stay here,” Mink murmurs.

I'm somewhere else. I'm stirring awake again. My arms and legs seem too heavy to move, but when I feel Mink's hands on me and hear the sloshing of water, I realize I'm in the bath with him kneeling beside me. I still feel cold, but I'm not shaking now. It's warm where his hands touch me.

Smoke curls up from behind his head, and I see a flicker of orange. I gasp, almost scream. The fire's here and he's brought me back inside. He can leave anytime, but I'm sick, I'm weak. I'll boil alive.

His fingers tighten on my arm and my shoulder, holding me firmly in place. “Easy,” he says evenly. “You're safe.”

I blink, and I understand. It's only candlelight. It doesn't even hurt my eyes if I don't look straight at it. Outside the window, no orange embers dance in the sky. Just stars.

I let out a wild, uncontrollable laugh that comes out almost like a hiccup.

“You _are_ back.” Mink doesn't take his hands off me, but he frowns.

I want to tell him he wouldn't believe where I went, but the words won't come. He reaches up to tuck a lock of my hair behind my ear and I pointlessly, powerlessly try to swat him away.

Then I manage to stutter out just one word. “W-why?”

_Why did I go where I went?_

_Why am I safe?_

_Why are you touching me that way?_

His brows knit together. “Get some rest. Your fever's still high. It could spike up again anytime.”

I laugh again. He frowns more deeply, like he wants to ask what's so funny.

_I'm not out of the woods yet,_ I think.


	2. Chapter 2

Mink lifts me out of the bath and sets me on the counter by the sink to dry me off. I almost protest, but I'm slipping in and out of consciousness. I can barely sit up on my own, let alone stand. I fight to stay awake the way I used to fight to get control of my body. I don't want to go back to the other version of this place. I know it's not likely that I'll slip into the same dream again, but who knows how a brain like mine is supposed to work? I'm programmed with all sorts of fun tricks. Just ask Aoba.

I can feel Aoba here with me again, sort of. Of all things, he's hiding behind me, shy that we're here laid out and exposed to Mink. I'd roll my eyes if I didn't think it'd make me dizzy enough to vomit again.

Mink is gentle with the soft towel, with my skin. He's thorough, but I can tell he's not out to catch a look or a feel. He's just doing what needs to be done, and I let him.

After that, he carries me to a bedroom. I think it's the same one from my dream, though I couldn't have dreamed of a room I've never visited. Then again, I might have glimpsed it without knowing and incorporated the sight into my thoughts. It's dusty, with a rough but polished wood floor. The bed is high and wider than one person really needs. The colors of the tapestry on the wall, lit in candleglow, display the warmth I wish I felt. I remember thinking that the cabin's interior seemed unlike Mink, but I'm not so sure now. Like him, it's big, plain, and functional, without seeming empty or stark.

I think Aoba would be nervous in here alone; he likes narrower, more familiar spaces. I'm the only one who knows that when he sleeps in a room where the bed is raised up off the floor, he has to peek underneath at least twice because he's wary of what might lurk there. I used to mock him for it, used to say – _what's the matter, little Aoba? Are you scared that you might get eaten up?_

Mink settles me onto the bed, which is cozy, but too firm to feel truly decadent. For perhaps the first time in my life, I hope that despite my nudity, he won't want to fuck me tonight. I'm sore all over in an unpleasant way. My skin feels tight, my mind wrung out, and I feel I could lapse back into nausea or uncontrollable trembling at any moment. 

It disgusts me to have to feel this weak, and to Mink's credit, he doesn't take advantage. He covers me up with a blanket, sets a glass of water right by the bed. He says, “Rest. I'll be in the next room.”

All I can see of him is a silhouette enormous enough to block out the light. I don't know why, but I don't want him to go. I want to babble at him like Aoba might. What I've done, what happened to Koujaku, is on the tip of my tongue. Mink doesn't know of anything that happened after he killed Toue and ran – doesn't know that Virus and Trip defused his bombs and rounded up those of us who'd failed and been left behind. Doesn't know that up until the day I left Midorijima, the members of Scratch Mink abandoned there still fought to take down what remains of Platinum Jail and its power. 

I suppose Mink would take solace in the fact that Scratch, and the old resident district along with them, are winning. At first I'd tried to convince myself that I left because I knew Oval Tower would soon fall, but the truth is, I'd have gone down with it if Koujaku had lived long enough to see it through by my side.

I laugh. I'm getting sentimental. Mink stares down at me and blows out the candles. “I meant you, too. Sleep if you can. You'll need it.”

And with that, he turns and leaves the room. I see Tori fly by the open doorway and perch on Mink's shoulder. Then he shuts the door behind him, and I'm alone in the dark, except for the shred of Aoba's presence I can still feel.

I know I'll be fighting to stay awake for as long as I can to avoid sinking into that dream again. So, for Aoba's peace of mind, I use all the strength I've got to lean over the side of the bed and peek underneath.

Of course, I find nothing, but now he'll rest easier.

 

* * *

 

I'm better prepared when I find myself in the woods again.

Despite my efforts to avoid this place, once I'm here, I'm secure in the thought that none of this is real. If I think of it that way, my power becomes absolute.

I can smell the death of ages-old trees on the wind. The air was quiet and still earlier, but it's picking up now, blowing the fire in my direction. Ash rains down. I could walk straight into it for fun and still come out in one piece, but I don't want to. Pain I feel here still hurts, and though usually I'd enjoy trying it out, the sun and my fever have seared my flesh with more than enough heat.

And also, I want to find Koujaku.

I felt his presence earlier. I still want him, even if he's nothing but a conjured memory. I could never give up the pleasure of his teeth and claws of my own will; I'd do anything to be marked by him once more.

I call him softly, under my breath, but the woods are dead silent except for the sound of the fire. Even when the wind blows, nothing stirs. Insects and birds, at least, should be fleeing to safety, but in this world, none exist. This has got to be a strange offshoot of Scrap conjured up by my fevered mind, and the very idea excites me. In Scrap, you have total control. You can destroy whatever you please.

And you can reverse death, too, if only for a while. 

I sing his voice out louder. “ _Kou_ ~jaku? Are you out there, darling?”

Only the hiss of the fire answers me. It doesn't matter. I've got time.

Once again my feet move on their own, propelling me where the core of my instinct wants to go. I don't know how or why, but I understand that I'm headed to the forest clearing where I first found Mink, where he threw me against a tree. Is he going to do it again when I arrive? I'm giddy at the thought, but really, what I'm hoping to find is Koujaku.

Flames flash orange far back through the trees. My sight is flawless here, like a hawk's, like Sei's, because I know that I made this world for myself. If I cared enough to work out the numbers I could tell you how many minutes it will take for the fire to reach me, how many trees it will consume in its path. At last, I own the forest again.

I didn't come here just for Mink. I came here to walk in a place that Koujaku's spirit could not reach, but I've given that up already. Now I'm hoping to conjure him.

Still trawling through the brush, I close my eyes and think of going inside Koujaku, into his mind. Of the doors opening and slamming behind me, over and over, while shadows lurk at the corners of my sight, while tendrils of hair tug at my legs. Dark shapes beyond white paper-thin walls. An unnatural stillness, and silence but for my own footsteps. I can't go into him again when he's not here, when he's dead anyway, when he's long since been burned and scattered or – for all I know – left to decay on the bloodied floor of his cell, but I know that I can change things within Scrap. I know that I have that power. 

I don't know if I'm inside Mink or myself or somewhere else entirely; I don't know if what I'm trying to do counts as creation, while I can only destroy. _Destroy_ , I think, turning the word over deliciously in my mind, whispering it aloud as I used to do to Aoba when I could catch him off-guard. _“Destroy.”_ If I mean to create something that will destroy me, won't it amount to the same in the end?

I focus; I think hard. The blood dripping down Koujaku's back, and then down the sharp blade of his sword. His skin blooming into color as my own went pale. Dead leaves beneath my feet – no. Polished floors. And the monsters of Koujaku's mind snaking up between the floorboards to take me.

I stumble and fall, scraping my hands. I feel splinters stab into them, and I know I've done it.

When I open my eyes, I'm still in a forest set aflame, but it's different now. The air has that stark chill I grew to understand when I spent all my hours inside, in Oval Tower. A humid, artificial chill that sinks into you and gets you sick, that makes you think at this rate, you'll never see the sun again.

It always felt that way, inside of Koujaku's mind.

I don't smell smoke anymore, only flower petals and wet red paint. The black tree trunks around me are as marked as I am, as Koujaku used to be. They've been cut across with diagonal slashes of dripping paint. I touch one and come away with red fingertips, which I use to outline the indentation on my hand carved out by Koujaku's teeth, as if the gouge were fresh and hurting. 

I'll press it to his mouth when I see him again, I decide. I will make him bite even deeper.

I go on, gliding easily over a ground that feels smoother than it looks. I'm walking the line between worlds. I _am_ the line between worlds. I am what overtook Aoba because he would not share his world with me, so I forced him down and ground him into bits, and rubbed what was left of him over my body to disguise myself as something that stands a chance at looking as though it belongs.

And I took down Aoba's Koujaku with me, I did what I had to do to make him mine, and I _will_ have him back.

I'm walking on the air. The night is dark and starless now. The glow of the fire's gone white. Embers fly like pale fallen stars, and now the wind is still. There's no longer paint on the trees, but red silk ropes twined like snakes through their ashen branches. I touch them as I go, let them slip through my fingers, pull one free and wrap it around my neck like a scarf. I'll use it to tie Koujaku down. I'll use it to make him tie me down. I won't be allowed to leave this place. 

I smile.

Then a voice pierces the silence, but it isn't Koujaku's. It's too deep, too urgent. There's a roughness to it, but no sensual edge at all. I try to ignore it, to push past it, to keep it from letting me sink, and I'm grabbed by my shoulders and flung to the ground – 

 

* * *

 

He's shaking me, Mink's shaking me awake. I feel as heavy and swollen all over as if he's been slamming me against the wall for hours. Maybe he has. I crack a smile. I might have stayed if he'd done this more when I first got here, if he'd told me he wanted me to stay here and be his and hurt for him, but he didn't, he knew who I was, he wouldn't give in to me. It doesn't matter. I'll fall unconscious again soon enough.

 

* * *

 

I blink and I'm back, crouching in the shadow of a tree. The fire's closer now, hotter now. Maybe I'll meet Koujaku in the flames. Maybe I'll die before I ever find him, maybe that's how it has to be. I've never wished before that I believed in an afterlife, but suddenly, I do. The heat is so intense that the ropes on the trees around me begin to blacken and curl. I fling an arm over the one around my neck to protect it, but it's already ash.

 

* * *

 

“Stay with me,” Mink says.

His hands are on my shoulders. He hasn't been hitting me, I realize; he's just been trying to force me to open my eyes. He's got something heavy, freezing, and wet draped over my forehead, and there's an awful taste in my mouth, like he's tried to force more of that medicine into me and I've brought it back up ten times over. The blankets are off me again. Even the candlelight is blinding, or maybe the fire's here too, maybe I've brought it over with me, maybe it's coming up on us to consume us while Mink tends to me with his painfully cold damp cloth that he strokes over my skin in places I don't want him to touch. I sit up halfway to spit in his face and he forces me back down again.

 

* * *

 

The glow of the fire is not orange now, not white, but pure red. It's an unnatural color, the color of Koujaku's hair and claws and blood, and I'm hungry for it. I'm lying on the forest floor staring up at the reddening sky, and I feel what Mink is doing to me in the waking world, and I feel something pulling at my ankle, winding up my leg, sinking through the fabric of the clothes I'm not really wearing and unraveling them inch by inch, pressing sharply into my skin, and I know all I have to do is stay here and wait for him to come and drag me down, but like a drowning swimmer dragged from the sea, I'm forced up and out toward a blinding world where the air is forced roughly back into my lungs – 

 

* * *

 

“Listen to me,” Mink says.

I keep my eyes closed. They're wet and stinging; I think I'm crying. Pathetic, but I just want this to end. I feel turned inside out. Even the touch of the sheets beneath my back feels sharp and painful, like I'm skinless, like I'm raw. I want Mink to go away, but he won't. He keeps talking.

“It's not just a fever. You've got a blood infection from one of those bites on you. You've had it for days. I don't know how you got this far before it knocked you down.”

I force out a heaving, painful laugh. “Koujaku killed me, too,” I try to say.

But the words don't reach Mink, whose voice, for all its gentleness and depth, sounds shrill to my ears. “Don't try to talk. I don't have what I need to treat you, and I'm not leaving you alone out here. You need to focus on getting through the night.”

What he's telling me is that it's never been a better time to let go.

“You, too,” Mink continues. “Aoba. If you can hear me.”

Let go, and leave Mink here with my corpse. He can pretend that it's still Aoba and pat himself on the back for doing all that he could. Cradle it like he did when I woke in the woods, powerless. Everyone wins.

Then I feel it. Aoba stirring and unfurling inside of me, essence stretching out to spread through my limbs and take control.

“Aoba?”

And then Mink says it to him. Really says it.

“Aoba. Don't give in.”

 

* * *

 

I'm falling into darkness, scrambling for purchase. Coming up with nothing.

I feel fingers brush against mine. Hot breath on my neck. _Koujaku_.

But he's falling too. And in moments, he's gone.

 

* * *

 

The fire is far away again. The smell of it is unsettling, like burnt flesh, but distant. It lights the forest just enough to show us a path to the clearing.

I watch from a half-conscious place deep inside as Aoba wanders forward, wavering like a child learning to walk – or like an injured man learning to walk again. 

This is not the sodden, overgrown hideaway where I found and fucked Mink last night. It's dry; it's earth scorched raw. Layers of tree bark have burnt away and turned to ash. Jagged black branches stick out starkly, stripped of their leaves. Roots sprawl like spiders across the red clay ground. Still, I know the fire hasn't yet passed this way. The damage here runs deep and old.

Mink is waiting, leaning against the trunk of a tree. 

“You're dying,” he says.

Aoba approaches him slowly, thoughts racing. _I'm sorry,_ he keeps thinking, in this spiraling, dizzying way. _I'm sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorry_

“Mink?” he says instead. He presses a hand to his temple, as if he thinks that will make him steady, keep him on his feet. “What is this place?”

“Ask that one.” He looks through Aoba, right at me. I'd recoil if I could. “He thinks he's a god.”

_I don't,_ I begin softly, but Aoba isn't listening.

“Did he...use Scrap?” Aoba asks. His voice shakes, like just saying the word is too much for him.

Mink shakes his head. “He pulled the scars from the forest. He thought he would walk alone here.”

“S-so this is where – ”

Mink cuts him off. “Worry about yourself tonight.”

I can't quite grasp what they're saying. I feel faint and distant, like a star looking down on the burning woods. I wonder if they're deliberately trying to confuse me. I wonder if that bitter-tasting drink is supposed to spare Aoba, and kill me.

I didn't want to go like this; to slowly fade away.

I try to wrench control from Aoba, but all it does is push my thought into his mind. “What is that stuff you keep feeding me?”

“It's to bring your fever down.” 

“So you think I have a chance of fighting it?” Aoba asks, with the weakest, most pathetic thread of hope in his voice.

I want to ask – _where was your will to live when you broke Koujaku?_

Mink says, “If you don't let that one drag you down.”

I shriek. I kick. I throw myself against the edges of Aoba's consciousness, but I'm too weak to force myself through. I didn't make this choice for Aoba. I didn't make him want to die. I gave him what he asked for, nothing more: our body bared, at the mercy of shattered men, destroyed as it was made to destroy.

And I shielded him from the worst of it.

Aoba loses his balance, sinks to his knees. Mink goes to him instantly, like he cares, but Aoba flinches away. I don't feel Mink grab him anyway, push him down into a sitting position and hold his shoulders steady. I barely hear Mink tell him that the fever can't reach him here, that he needs to stay conscious, keep fighting.

I whisper to Aoba, while he's this vulnerable: _Mink only wants to use you. _It's true, isn't it? What other stake does he have?__

__Koujaku would have been worth fighting for. He wanted us to keep._ _

__I look up out of Aoba's glassy eyes, staring at the glowing red sky. I wonder, if you die while you dream, does it cut off all at once or ease you out? I manage to get him to bring Koujaku's wound to our mouth for one more kiss. We're curled on our side now, leaning away from Mink, his hands trying fruitlessly to keep us upright._ _

__The black roots, like the heavy bodies of bloated slugs, start crawling toward us. The dry red clay gets in our mouth. I'm thinking of how if Aoba and I died right now, our shared small bones would lie here to be bleached white by the sun; would one day turn to dust and mingle with those of Mink's ancestors._ _

__Mink leans over us, arms under us, holding us close to him. The sun rises red beyond his head, and the branches behind him look like antlers sprouting from him, growing too long too fast. Small rips appear in their flesh, and the blood drops onto our face._ _

___We should have kept Koujaku's bones _. The thought sounds like me, but comes from Aoba.__ _ _

____And we're gone again, into the blinding light. I know what's best for Aoba; I've been with him all along. For his sake, I fold into myself and try to disappear._ _ _ _

____ _ _

____* * *_ _ _ _

____ _ _

____I wake in the dark of the cabin._ _ _ _

____Outside the window, there's light on the horizon. I lie limp on the bed, able to breathe only shallowly, watching Mink stand there and stare at the sun. He's murmuring something under his breath. I don't know the language, but I know that it's a prayer._ _ _ _

_____Lock me in and shut my eyes,_ I think. I don't want to fight. It was a mistake to come here. I feel like something's been beating on the inside of my head, turning it into a fleshy pulp. Probably it was me._ _ _ _

____My cracked, dry lips burn with pain each time a breath goes past them. Have I gotten this way in only a day? Did Koujaku ever feel like this alone in the basement?_ _ _ _

____My nose is running, and I can't even lift my hand to wipe it. Or is it the blood from Mink's antlers, from my dream? The sheets beneath me are soaked through with sweat, and I'm not even strong enough to shiver, but I can't die. Something's binding me to this body, keeping me from letting go._ _ _ _

____Air like knives in my chest, heartbeat erratic. I'm itching all over, especially in the hollows left by Koujaku's claws and teeth. I'm lying on a bed of melting ice. There's nothing for me here; like Mink says, nothing walks in these woods, or at least nothing I can know._ _ _ _

____I would go and leave this body to Aoba right now if I could, as Koujaku has left his own, but I'm trapped. I can't even push him to the front._ _ _ _

____Mink keeps praying. It's low and rhythmic, like a song. I think of how Aoba believes it's selfish for us to have come all this way, to have dragged ourself across land that belongs only to Mink. I wonder if he's praying for us. For me._ _ _ _

____I guess, for a while, it doesn't matter if I can't die, so long as someone is choosing to keep me._ _ _ _

____I laugh, but Mink doesn't hear._ _ _ _

____ _ _

____* * *_ _ _ _

____ _ _

____I don't know if Aoba can hear me, but I tell him: _You put Ren and Beni to sleep. You sent them to…__ _ _ _

____I can't bring myself to call her Granny. She isn't, to me. She tried to erase me._ _ _ _

_____To Tae-san. I don't know how you got control long enough to do it. ____ _ _ _

______He doesn't reply. I want to get angry that he won't acknowledge this kindness, this outreach, but I'm too exhausted to dwell on it._ _ _ _ _ _

______For the first time, it occurs to me that I don't know if anyone told Tae what happened to us._ _ _ _ _ _

______ _ _ _ _

______* * *_ _ _ _ _ _

______ _ _ _ _

______It's midday in the forest. I'm alone here now. There's no sign of the clearing, or Aoba, or Mink. The fire has burned itself out, but smoke still rises in the distance against the bright blue sky. There's a cool breeze, as if autumn has come early, and it's comfortable for me to walk for a while. If this is the afterlife, I suppose I don't mind, but I still won't believe it until I see proof. I know as well as anyone how much human minds can do._ _ _ _ _ _

______I'm no longer in pain, though my skin is filled with a strange, faint numbness, like healing bee stings. There's some space between me and my body. When I let my fingers trail along a branch, I can't feel the bark's texture unless I press hard._ _ _ _ _ _

______The burn on my hand is gone. So are the bruises from Mink. There are spots of drying blood on my shirt. I can see the snow caps on distant mountains, smell the tree sap and the soil, hear the droning of bright-winged insects I've never before seen or heard, but none of it quite seems real. Or: It is real, I am not._ _ _ _ _ _

______I can't feel Aoba, but I'm thinking of him. I talk to him anyway, in a calm and peaceful voice that sounds more like him talking to – anyone else, but not me. _Do you remember when you first started on those pills?_ He was young, pulling away from me, being forced away. Scared to enjoy the things we did together. I missed him; I saw the whole thing as us against the world. Late at night when he was on the line between wakefulness and dreaming, I'd bubble up from within him, slip into his skin, curl around him like a protective shell. I'd smile._ _ _ _ _ _

______And he'd come alive, thrashing and screaming, until Tae burst into the room with calming words, and another dose._ _ _ _ _ _

_______You thought I was a nightmare._ _ _ _ _ _ _

______It's a funny thought now, but back then, I'd thought I was drowning._ _ _ _ _ _

______I guess I must have known on some level that there was something else inside of Koujaku too, something despised and repressed, because I never felt hatred from him. Although I don't think he ever looked close enough to see me, really. His eyes stopped at the surface of Aoba._ _ _ _ _ _

______It was a surprise, a delight, to watch Koujaku unfold before me and blossom, like a gift meant just for me. I remember telling him, _give in, give in,_ it won't be so bad, you owe yourself the freedom. _ _ _ _ _ _

______I remember letting Aoba slip out now and then to see him, to do foolish things like embrace him through a whirlwind of teeth and claws, just to whisper to him words that could no longer reach him. But I got jealous, and I stopped. I wanted both of them devoted to only me._ _ _ _ _ _

______Then Aoba sank away. Koujaku followed, and I suppose what hit me the hardest the day his breath stopped coming was that no one, no buried spirit, rose up to take his place._ _ _ _ _ _

______Although I doubt that lotus grows here, I glance around in hopes of finding a flower that reminds me of him, or a red bird perched on a tree, but I see only bluebells._ _ _ _ _ _

_______You're strong, you know that?_ I say to Aoba. _That's why you outlived him.__ _ _ _ _ _

______I mean it as a compliment, but I get no answer in return._ _ _ _ _ _

______ _ _ _ _

______* * *_ _ _ _ _ _

______ _ _ _ _

______The day presses on, and I walk. I pick half-closed morning glories from their stems and weave them into my hair. I wonder if they'll bloom tomorrow, though they're detached from their stems. I wonder if there will be a tomorrow, at all._ _ _ _ _ _

______I don't feel tired, thirsty, or hungry. No blisters form on my feet. If I'm dead, is Aoba dead with me? I remember feeling so sick that I would have died and left him behind, if given the chance. But I hadn't been counting on an afterlife, couldn't fathom one without him._ _ _ _ _ _

______Maybe this is what it's like inside our head, once you've given up the fight. If so, then it's just a matter of biding my time. When he weakens, out I'll come._ _ _ _ _ _

______The birds go quiet, and after a while the sun sets, masking the last tendrils of smoke. In the last light, I come upon a place thick with new growth, which smells stiflingly green. Wide, umbrella-like mushrooms grow in spots where fallen trees have gone to rot. There was a fire here once too, I think. But the parts of the forest consumed have risen up to take root once more._ _ _ _ _ _

______I am not at all surprised when I see the orange flame of a small, manageable fire – a campfire – licking up at the air, through the trees. I know that Mink will be there, and that we've come full circle._ _ _ _ _ _

______He's sitting on the forest floor as before, though he's not smoking this time. I don't take my place across from him just yet, though. I tilt my head and ask him, “How am I doing?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He looks up. I'm surprised, at first, to see that his eyes are no longer blue. They're a shade of gold that reminds me of the way mine look when Aoba and I combine. I don't ask him about it, though._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Sleeping,” Mink says. He sounds rough, like he's been waiting here for long enough that his voice is out of practice. “For a few days, now. Although Aoba has spoken with me more than once.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“We're both alive?” I come closer, sit down, lean in._ _ _ _ _ _

______Mink's expression and posture don't change, but a thread of derision enters his voice. “Were you hoping to kill him off?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______I smile at him. So self-righteous, I think. On impulse, I change the subject. “Why are _you_ still alive? Didn't you come back out here to die?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He looks hard at me. “I realized that not everything that happens in the world is about me.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______A lesson I suppose he figures I would do well to learn. “Do you know that Aoba was desperate to find you? You can blame me for dragging him out here, but it wasn't me at all.” I sigh and stretch my legs out, to cross them at the ankles. “He had this idea that you could somehow explain everything that you did to him. That you'd pour out your whole tragic story to him, and after that he could fix you up and heal you.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______I can't read his eyes, which is starting to bother me. _Hit harder,_ I think. I go on. “Or maybe you'd say you just couldn't control your violent urges, and he'd go, _'ah, poor Mink, just take it all out on me instead!'_ But we both know it's more complex than that, don't we?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I am nothing like you,” Mink softly says._ _ _ _ _ _

______I flash back, the way Aoba sometimes did before he let me out, to the image of Mink burned onto our brain. Standing there, leaning over us, hand on our belt buckle. Ready to strike again._ _ _ _ _ _

______I want to snap, to get in his face, and scream, but I have more control now that I've been out for so long. I have the patience to make him hurt. “You know what it's like, don't you? To be held down, trapped where you can't fight back. To have to watch, completely powerless, while the world comes down around you.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He gives me the slightest, the smallest of nods._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Yeah. It feels like shit. But you know what's worse?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He doesn't respond. I've risen to my feet. My shadow, ten feet tall, looms up behind me. I think of how Mink's fists feel when they hit. I want them, and I know they'll come in time._ _ _ _ _ _

______I think, instead, of how they felt to Aoba._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Here's the thing,” I tell him shakily, like I'm sick and stuttering again. “What's worse is letting it happen, because you can't fathom a world where someone would do that to you without a good reason. When you're too naive to get that they're all just out to use you. So you figure you must deserve it.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______I can't bring myself to calmly pause, to let the words sink in. I look at Mink's flat expression. He looks stupid and dull, like a cow. “That's what you did to him. So don't look at me. Whether he knew it or not, _he's_ the one who came all this way to die.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______That's what Mink did to him, that's what they all do. I think of Koujaku, even Koujaku, who I loved, shoving Aoba down on the bed and then swearing he'd lost control of himself. I wanted it, wanted him, wanted the raw exposed truth of him, but in the moment when it happened and I felt Aoba fall through the fear that it stirred, I wasn't thinking of Koujaku at all. I raged forward, struggled against the surface, to turn _him_ into the one pinned and afraid, but Aoba shoved me down and told me: _It's not his fault. It's not that bad.__ _ _ _ _ _

______Well, Koujaku got what was coming to him._ _ _ _ _ _

______Mink looks at me, considering the accusations I've made. The fire reflects in his eyes. I can see him turning his thoughts over and over in his mind. Then he closes his eyes, and he says, “It's as you put it. I have no explanation or excuse.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______I don't know that I'm going after him until I'm already across the fire, trailing flowers, with my teeth at his throat. He falls back, either caught by surprise or yielding to me. I know just where to bite by now; I taste blood and drink deeply, let it run down my chin. I could rip him open and bleed him out if he'd let me, but I hope that he fights._ _ _ _ _ _

______After feeling walled off from the world all day long, Mink's body stirs me back to life. The scent of him is sharp, cinnamon and sweat and fear. _Fear_ – it feels good to see. It's what Mink couldn't put into words. You see fear in someone's eyes, someone's strange, golden, changed eyes, and you know what your power is worth._ _ _ _ _ _

______I rip a feather from Mink's hair, not caring who or what it's meant to symbolize. It's for Aoba now, a sacrifice. Mink's hand shoots out to grab my wrist, bends it back until it hurts, until the bones strain at the tight, scarred skin. I laugh wildly and force his legs apart with my knee, which startles him enough, unfortunately, that he lets me go._ _ _ _ _ _

______I lean on him hard, elbows resting on his chest. I imagine them digging in so hard there that they slowly tear and separate the fibers of his muscles, though I know that at best they'll only bruise. He sits up halfway, then lies back down. It can't feel good to bend around my bones._ _ _ _ _ _

______Then I stand up and plant a foot in the middle of his chest instead, to keep him down while I slip off my clothes. I could strip him and stay dressed, make him vulnerable in that way, but I want to make a show of how I've ruined Aoba's body. I display, for Mink, new reddish thin flesh across hipbones, bites taken out of thighs, bruised tendons, crooked toes. I show him where I've been gnawed down to the ribs. I show him a hard cock ringed with the imprints of teeth. I unbutton my shirt rather than slipping it over my head. I want what's left of my flower crown to stay._ _ _ _ _ _

______I sink to my knees on top of him, my whole weight on him. He fights a little harder to breathe. Blood flows down his neck, soaking through his shirt collar, which is where I now poise my hands, above his top button._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Do you want this?” I ask him, as sweetly as I can._ _ _ _ _ _

______He pulls me down, crushes me to him. His hands wrap around mine, painfully tightly, and guide me through opening his shirt and his jeans. He's ready, visibly so, thick cock straining to get in me, strong thighs tense with want for me. Pleased, I laugh at the sight, but I don't touch him there yet. Instead, I crawl up his body, cradle his head in my hands, and lean over him to push myself into his mouth._ _ _ _ _ _

______If he wanted to hurt me badly, he could. I leave that up to him. His teeth fit into the furrows Koujaku left behind and it's good, in that way, to feel filled up again._ _ _ _ _ _

______His strong fingers rise to grip my hips, but I grab his wrists, pin them down over his head, and lean on them, fingernails sinking in. He could shove me off if he wanted, but he lets me grind into him. I can't see his face; it's hidden by my own shadow._ _ _ _ _ _

______He only takes a few seconds to give into the game. His wrists stop straining and flexing against my grasp. His tongue, impossibly strong, slides up the length of me, and his lips press together, tight. I can feel the fire glowing at my back. The prickle of stubble on his chin scratches against my thighs, and the wound I've left on his neck wets them warmly with blood that must, by now, have gotten into his mouth. I won't pull out to kiss him, but I'm hungry for the taste._ _ _ _ _ _

______I let go of one wrist to grab a handful of his hair, and I pull it hard enough that he gasps sharply, taking the heat of his mouth away from me. He throws his head back, struggles against my grip. When he swallows me down again, he sinks his teeth in deeper._ _ _ _ _ _

______I push against the sharpness, hoping that I'll bleed. I want Mink in me, using me, throwing me around hard enough to break me, but it'll wait. It has to wait. For now I breathe hard with the effort of holding his huge strong body down, and I fuck his mouth hard enough to choke him._ _ _ _ _ _

______He flicks his tongue against the tip of my cock, then flattens it firmly there, then takes its pressure away until I scratch his arm raw and yank on his hair. His chest rises with each quick breath he takes in, and when he exhales, I feel it on the stretch of skin between my hips. I draw my hands back, let my body do the work. I stick my fingers in my mouth and taste the flesh I've stripped from him under my nails._ _ _ _ _ _

______He's ready for me to come. He tightens himself up even more, wraps his tongue around me. I relax against him when it happens, and he catches my wrists to hold them tight. He swallows hard and keeps sucking on me until I'm too sensitive to let him keep it up, until my arms are shaking in his hands, and then he presses his teeth in so I can't pull away and does it a little bit more._ _ _ _ _ _

______I move back to straddle his chest. With the back of one hand, he wipes his mouth clean of blood, come, and spit. Petals from my flowers are tangled in his hair. He licks his lips and glances up at me, looking starved._ _ _ _ _ _

______I know he'll be painfully hard, straining to get inside me, but this is the part where he has to play by my rules. I roll off of him and lie in the dirt by his side. I take his hand and look down at how a pink blush of pleasure has risen to the surface of my pale skin, all over. His eyes, I can tell, are following mine._ _ _ _ _ _

______I grin at him and say, “Prove you can wait.”_ _ _ _ _ _


	3. Chapter 3

We lie there for a long while, staring up to watch the stars shift with the passage of time. I'm still not tired, and if Mink is, he's not letting on. I keep expecting the sun to rise, but it doesn't. Won't, I suspect, until we're ready for it.

I'm aching for more of him, and I know he must be feeling it even harder. But he's stoic as a rock, revealing nothing, until he turns to me and speaks.

“Can Aoba feel your pain?”

I lift an arm to the light and turn it over, showing it off. Bites and gashes from Koujaku, new fingerprint bruises from Mink. “If you're asking whether I did this to hurt him, I didn't.”

“The first time I encountered you, then – ”

“If he'd let me out sooner, he wouldn't have had to feel what you did to him,” I confirm. I remember the swirl of hatred induced in me. Rage at Mink for hurting Aoba, rage at Aoba for letting him, for holding me back. Jealousy, too. I'd wanted to be the one beneath his fists. “But he was more afraid of me than he was of you.”

“I was afraid of you as well. It might have been the first time I'd felt fear, ever since.” Since what, he doesn't need to say. I feel his eyes flick to the forest around us. “It made you a good protector.”

“That's not what I am to him.” I laugh. And this time, I don't shy away from using the word for what Mink did. “If he were here, you could rape him again, and he'd still fight me until you wore him out.”

“I wouldn't treat him that way now. I have no reason to.”

“You said earlier that you never had a reason in the first place.”

“No desire, then.”

An involuntary smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “I don't believe you.”

“Then it's a good thing he has you to defend him.”

For a while, I can't find any more words. It's not as simple as Mink seems to think it is. I spent most of my conscious life trying to become a part of Aoba, and even if I still wanted it, by now I can hardly blame him for refusing to have me. Accepting me would be as impossible for him as staying happily with Mink for the rest of his life. Even if Mink were true to his word and never raised a hand to Aoba again, it wouldn't change the patterns Mink carved into the fabric of Aoba's mind – the ones that make Aoba flinch away from the gentlest touch.

 

* * *

 

Clouds stripe the sky above us. Campfire smoke hangs in the air. Though I'm still undressed, and Mink halfway there, no insects bite us. Nothing is drawn by the smell of Mink's blood.

I'm next to break the silence. The confession slips out of my mouth as suddenly as if Aoba put it there. “I killed Koujaku.”

Mink just grunts. And why should he care? They barely knew each other, and to Mink, the death of a stranger must mean next to nothing.

I stumble my way through the story anyway. I tell him that after he killed Toue, Morphine kept the tower running, for a while at least. I could have stepped up and seized control, but I wanted control of Koujaku far more than I wanted control of Midorijima – which, like this forest, I trust to rise again, to find a way to grow around the ruins and stand tall.

I never intended to live long. I don't think Aoba did either. I made a mistake; I made myself into his and Koujaku's common enemy, gave them a reason to keep fighting, when all I'd wanted was to build them a world where it was okay to let go for a while.

I find myself, for no reason I can understand, telling Mink stories I hadn't realized I still remembered. Koujaku waking up for school a half hour early to pack an extra lunch for Aoba, because Tae was too proud to admit to Aoba that she'd started to hurt too much to cook first thing in the morning. Then arriving past the beginning of class anyway, with a smile on his face, because he'd wanted to walk together even though Aoba woke up late. 

Koujaku teaching Aoba to swim, the summer after Aoba's parents left him, when he still cried for them nearly every night. Koujaku promising to dive in after him if he sank, to let the saltwater sting his eyes and the sea monsters nibble his feet, if that's what he had to do to save Aoba.

I know I'm leaving out the bad parts. The times he'd neglect Aoba to run off with girls, or reprimand Aoba for not being sugar-sweet enough around people they both hated. The pressure he put on Aoba, at times, to be together, do everything together. Let me cut your hair; let me walk you to and from school and work; let me press you down on a hotel bed against your will. In a way, it was a relief when Koujaku first left the island.

But to Aoba, in more ways, it hurt.

“He would have wanted a pretty death,” I say to Mink.

After a moment's thought, Mink responds, “Death is never pretty.”

I know that. I understand. But I wonder, anyway, if anyone wrapped Koujaku in a clean kimono, or burned incense in his honor. The last time I saw his body, I thought of it as an empty husk, and forced myself away from it without a second thought. Now I wonder if anyone bothered to pick him up off the basement floor and tend to his remains.

As if he knows what I'm thinking, Mink suggests, “Perhaps when you're well, you should return to bury him. Or to pay your respects.”

“I'd get into trouble for what I did to him.” No one there would understand, I tell myself, that I'd only been doing what Koujaku asked. “A-and I'd deserve it.”

Mink shakes his head. “No one deserves to be locked away. It only makes you hard, or weakens you until you're nothing. It can't make up for what you've done.” 

That much I understand now, at least.

“Besides,” Mink says, eyes flicking to me. “You've both spent long enough locked up.”

I don't say anything. But when Mink extends his arm toward me, I move closer and rest my head on it.

 

* * *

 

The deeper the night, the fainter the stars. All sound has died away, except the constant sharp snap of the fire.

“Mink?” I say. “When your family was killed, what did you do to mourn them?”

It's one of those questions that, for a while, kept Aoba up worrying at night for no reason I could fathom.

“Nothing,” he simply says.

“That can't be true. Not with how much you pray.”

Mink sighs and looks away from me, but he begins to talk.

“There are those who would have you believe that the afterlife rejects any spirit that hasn't been properly prepared.”

“Do you believe that?”

He doesn't answer. “Even someone empty of faith like you should be able to understand. We are all taught to follow rituals so that, in the face of loss, our minds are able to move on.”

I don't understand, exactly. But I stay quiet, hoping he will go on.

“Toue took their bodies,” Mink explains. “I could observe no rituals. What I had left was revenge.”

I hesitate. Then I repeat Mink's own words to me. I say what Aoba would want me to say. “Perhaps, then, while we're here, we should pay our respects.”

Again, Mink doesn't answer. But under his breath, he begins to pray.

I hold his hand and let his words wash over me, as if I may be able to understand them on some deep instinctive level; as if I may be able to tell them that I'm sorry, too.

 

* * *

 

When I'm ready, I throw myself on him.

“Make it hurt,” I gasp.

He responds. Sits up, pulls me into his lap. Rakes his nails down my back, pressing our chests flat together. Somewhere in another world, the world that passes for real, I'm prone and quiet and dying or dead. But here, wherever I am, I've reclaimed the fire to fight it.

I feel my teeth cut through the edge of Mink's earlobe. Fresh blood pours down him, over the clotted streams from our last fuck. He laughs at me, a low sound in the back of his throat, and rips his fingernails through my skin again. They're very short, but ragged. Mink, of all people, a nail biter? I laugh too, and press teeth through the flesh at the base of his neck.

He pushes his fingers into my mouth to show that he's drawn blood from me, too. I suck them hard, take them deep, feel the nails slice the back of my throat. I slip my hand between us and wrap it around his cock, noting with a swirling movement of my thumb that the tip's already slick. I could shift my weight and sit on it right now, if I wanted to. It's not wet enough to avoid ripping me, hurting us both, but that's how I like it thanks to him, thanks to what he did to Aoba.

Instead, I take the pressure of my hand away and bite down on his fingers hard, grinding them between my back teeth. He grunts in pain and backhands me out of nowhere, sending me sprawling into the dirt. I prop myself up on my elbows and grin at him, fondly stroking the place on my cheek that he has reddened.

He pins me down, looms over me, lets his blood spatter on my chest. The sky above is purest black; the twin scents of smoke and cinnamon fill me. His palms press me to the ground and his nails sink into my shoulders, leaving red half-moon marks in the same places as Koujaku's tattoos.

Although he can't feel it the way I do, I bite at Mink's hair, because it's all I can reach. He moves a hand off of me to sweep it back, and when he does, I try to twist my way out from under him. He hits me harder then, knuckles cracking against my jaw and sending my head snapping to the side – now, that's more like it. He leans more of his weight on me now. His eyes aren't as flat and dead as they used to be, but there's a slow burn behind them, and I want to fan the flames.

I try to catch his dripping blood in my mouth. I smile at him, my teeth dyed red. “Did you know that you were Aoba's first?”

“Was I.”

In a way, he was. Back in our Rhyme days, Aoba and I had made our way into the beds of a few lady fans. We'd sucked a few dicks in alleyways after matches, to show we weren't a sore winner. And once I'd gotten him so drunk he let a friend eat him out, which neither remembered, come morning. But no one had straight-up fucked him until Mink came along. Aoba was scared to do it, scared it would hurt, and I wasn't about to force him through that kind of pain.

“His first,” I say again, to Mink. I press up against him, push my legs together around his enormous stiff cock, stroke him up and down with the strength of my thighs. “And you made him suffer for it, didn't you? When you could have saved all the pain for me.”

He grabs my hair hard and uses it to flip me over. My vision whites out; I shriek in pain and in delight. I spit his own blood at him and hope it gets in his eyes, and then I slam down facefirst on the ground with Mink on my back. I try to breathe and get a mouthful of wet dirt.

The first fuck is over fast. He keeps his tight grip on my hair the whole way through, forcing upon me a pain that feels like he's got a bundle of my raw nerves in his fist. He lets me loose only long enough to wrap his belt around my wrists and secure them behind my back, and he keeps a knee on me while he does it, crushing the air out of me with his weight.

He hooks a thumb inside me to spread me open as well as he can and pushes in all the way, all at once. There's a moment of sick searing pain, the feel of sensitive skin pulling taut and tearing, and then it only feels full and delicious, heavy and hard, painful in a dull and stretching way, while the ache in my hair is so hard I'm sure that each white-hot root will bleed.

But after how long I've made him wait, he's done in only a few thrusts. He gasps through his teeth and leans into me, then pulls back, pulls out so fast it's like it never happened. He untangles his hand from my hair, and I watch a flower petal fall from his grasp and drift into the fire. And I'm left here on the ground, learning to breathe again, while the ringing in my ears subsides.

I pick myself up. Work my way out of the belt, which is easy, though it takes some skin off. I roll onto my back and look at Mink warily – he's sitting again with his legs crossed, pants already pulled up. He's so quick to fuck, and even quicker to push me off when he's done. I know he could have made it last longer, if he'd wanted to. 

He eyes me, particularly between the legs. Where I'm hard and wet with precome for him, where I'm still pink and open and tender for him.

“You want more already?” He asks.

“It's not like I want to fucking cuddle,” I mutter.

And I don't. I just want him to spend the next three hours beating and fucking me bloody instead of shoving me away, that's all. I want to be left with more of him than a bruised feeling all over my scalp and a fading warmth inside.

Still, I don't complain when he pulls me to him and sits me in his lap, chest against my back.

His muscles are harder than the ground, and the angles of his face could be carved out of solid rock, but it's comfortable here anyway. I feel his eyes drift over me, appraising, and I wonder what metric he's using to judge me. Is he comparing me to Aoba? Noting how I've made Aoba's body pale, and soft from so much time spent indoors? Calculating the damage, counting the scars?

Whatever he's looking for, it doesn't make him reject me. One of his hands moves up my side, drifting over the bites taken out of my ribs, to settle over the bruises and cuts he's left on my shoulder. The other hand slips over my thigh and settles around my cock, which he immediately begins to stroke at a slow, teasing pace.

“I sold my first time,” he says, so low and close to my ear that I almost jump. “For information.”

It takes me a minute to realize he's talking about sex. “Is that supposed to make me feel bad for you?”

“No. It was a fair trade.”

He's tracing patterns on my shoulder, or words. Up my neck, down my arm. I wonder if he's writing a prayer, to bind me to the earth or bend me to his will. Probably, he's only fidgeting. I want him to cut or ink it into me anyway, so I can be marked like Koujaku. I raise my hips, push into Mink's hand, and wonder what Koujaku's first time was like, if he ever got fucked by anyone other than me.

“Did it hurt?” I ask Mink.

“In a way.”

“You could show me how it hurt.” I don't want to come like this, pathetically calm, wrapped up in Mink's arms with his fingertips softly playing over me. I don't even know how I'm staying hard. This is, I realize, the gentlest I've ever had it.

“Why do you want so badly to hurt?”

I know what he's really asking. “I told you, Aoba doesn't feel it when I hurt.”

“I wasn't asking Aoba.”

“Good, because he's not here.”

“Isn't he?”

I can feel Mink getting hard beneath me. Enough is enough. I turn around, so I'm facing him, sitting on him with my legs around his waist. I say, “I liked Koujaku better. He couldn't talk.” Then I put one of his hands back between my legs, place the other against the curve of my ass, and hold my wrist up to his lips. “Bite.”

His breath on my skin is hotter than the blood that runs though me. I'm picturing his strong jaw working away at me, teeth ripping, but he just looks down at me, faintly amused. He lets his palm slide over my cock, presses a fingertip inside me.

“Hm,” he says. Then he bites. His mouth encircles my wrist completely. I close my eyes; he could bite my hand right off, if he wanted. His tongue traces veins and his teeth meet bone, and his fingernail scrapes me deep inside, and I'd bleed out into his mouth right now if I could, but I feel nothing flowing from me, and when he lets me go and I look again, there's no blood. There's a lovely purple bruise, maybe one that goes to the bone, but there are only shallow red creases where his teeth wore away the first few layers of skin.

I need to get off, and I'm not letting Mink stop me. “Not like that,” I breathe, leaning in close, resting my head on his shoulder. He wants gentle and tender, I'll give it to him. I kiss his neck, stroke his hair, let our bodies settle together, take in the smell of his sweat. Then, all at once, I bite and suck at the scabs and clots over the wounds I've made on him tonight, making them flow freely again, sinking my teeth deeper into their indentations. “Like _this_.”

He doesn't hit me or push me this time. Instead, he grabs my hair hard enough to make me yell, and he uses it to hold me in place, flattened against him. When the pain in my hair settles enough that I can move, I scramble to dig my fingers into his wounds and get them slippery. Then I rub Mink's blood inside of me, more and more of it, until there's enough to help him ease in despite my soreness. I guide him into me, and he grabs my hips to pull me down hard and fill me all at once.

I brace my hands at the back of his neck and ride him, rising until there's nothing but his tip inside, then falling back down, falling into Mink and getting lost the only way I know how. “Tear me apart,” I hiss to him, as I take in a mouthful of blood. “Hurt me, torture me, break me, hit me – ”

That one he obeys. He smacks the side of my face. Most of the blood I'm holding in my mouth flies out, so I kiss him hard, force my tongue in, make him drink what's left of it. He swallows like he wants it. I bite his lip and he rips into mine, splitting it down the middle, in return.

I'm laughing now, drunk on the pain, stroking my own cock so he can hurt me better. I'd come any minute, if he could just make it hurt a little more.

“Choke me,” I suggest.

He does. I'm on my back on the ground again, empty of him. My skull smashes down on a rock, and if he'd thrown me harder I'd have fallen into the fire. He wraps one of his huge hands around my neck. I think he could snap my spine, if he wanted. 

I hope he'll let me come first, but I whisper anyway, “Crush me.”

“Shut up,” he says. He picks me up by my throat and slams me back down again. Wind knocked out of me, blood from my lip flowing so heavily it blocks my nose and my mouth. I can't talk back now, not without the breath to form words.

In the real world, am I choking to death in my sleep? Will Mink wake to find me curled up breathless and blue-lipped in his guestroom?

I spit, cough, swallow down what I can. He's still holding my throat, but in a scratchy whisper I ask him, “Will you fuck me again once I'm dead?”

He takes his hands off me, stares down at me. I'm naked and splayed by the fire, full of blood and come, stroking myself off as I bleed into my own goddamn nose. I manage a strained laugh at how stupid I must look. Mink's wounds, on the other hand, make him look like he's been at war.

“Did you practice looking intimidating?” I ask in a scratchy voice. “I mean, like, in prison?”

“Why did you come here?” he asks.

I remember he tried to ask that earlier, though it feels like years ago. I don't know what I told him before, but this time I just don't answer. It'd take Aoba to force the words out.

Mink doesn't seem to care that I don't respond. He leans over me, strokes my hair, and separates a lock of it, then twirls that small section around his fingers, too softly to hurt.

“You should ask to stop when you're in too much pain,” he says.

“Like you'd listen.” I laugh. I start to shake my head, but it makes my hair pull. “Anyway, it's never too much.”

“You enjoyed being weak and shaking with fever?”

“That's different.” _Because you didn't do it to me._

“Hm,” Mink says.

Then he takes the lock of my hair and thrusts it into the fire.

It's worse than pain. The unbearable heat races through me like it flows in my veins, and my heart speeds up more than it should, fluttering like a trapped bird. I'm too shocked to even scream.

He wouldn't do this. It can't be real. In the real world I'm next door to death, I must be. The heat is surging up from within me to drag me down.

What's left of my hair, in Mink's hand, is an inch shorter, black and smoking at the tips. I see three of this in front of me for a minute, before I can focus. He sticks the burned section into his mouth to cool it, which brings on a whole new wave of pain. I scramble at him for anything to hold onto.

He takes my hand. An acrid smell hangs in the air, and all I can hear is my heartbeat.

I close my eyes and tell him, “Keep going.”

But I fight him this time. Teeth in his arms, knees between his legs, fingers ripping at the corners of his eyes like I can tear them out. I'm still hard, but getting off isn't as important as fighting back. Once, I wrap his hair around my fist and pull it hard enough to draw involuntary tears, and I laugh in his face.

And still, he pins me down and feeds me to the fire. I'm ready for it this time. I start stroking myself off again as the flames lick at me, melt through me. No one else will ever get to feel quite this kind of pain. I shouldn't waste it.

Like any pain, I start to get used to it after the first few times I black out. And like any pain, it has its way of making me crave more. Soon I'm gazing up at Mink, tears drying in the corners of my eyes, smiling as he strokes my hair with one hand and burns it, strand by strand, with the other.

“Are you trying to scare me off so Aoba can come out?” I ask.

“You aren't holding him back,” Mink says. 

It's true, at least in this place. I haven't heard from him at all. Another strand goes into the fire. I grin like the corners of my mouth are attached to that pulled-tight piece of hair, and I try not to whimper.

“You're something unnatural,” he observes.

I think, _what was your first clue? _But I say, “You must want me out of your precious forest, then.”__

__He shakes his head. “You aren't as destructive as you think.”_ _

__I frown, though it's true that I haven't considered using Scrap on Mink all night. Then again, what would it accomplish? The fun of him is that I don't know what he's going to do to me next._ _

__He burns me again. I'm dizzy, but I'm almost numb to the pain. The burnt strands all prickle at the ends, like the phantom pains I used to get sometimes, as if my hair were longer than it is, hurting in places that aren't there._ _

__“You did save Aoba,” Mink says._ _

__I look at him. He's braiding a section of my hair now. I can't even feel it, and I laugh at the idea that after this, if I get through this, brushing it won't hurt at all anymore._ _

__“The first time I saw you,” he continues. “You made me think of Aoba as something more than I thought he was.”_ _

__Mink lets my small braid graze the fire, but not burn. I wince, but it feels good that way, like pushing a needle just through the top layers of your skin._ _

__“So I scared you off from using him?” I ask. “Or appealed to you, because there was twice as much to use.”_ _

__Mink shakes his head. He takes a feather from his own hair and weaves it through my braid. I sigh heavily at him. I still haven't gotten off, and he's already done hurting me._ _

__“What, then?” I say._ _

__“You made me remember that there can be more to a person than what you expect.”_ _

__I shake my head and turn away from him, curling up on my side. My braid slips out of his grasp. I unravel it quickly, destroy it._ _

__Without Aoba, what is there to me? Just that. Destruction._ _

__But then, I never wanted to be anything to Mink but a decent fuck._ _

__I say the only thing I can think to say, senseless as it seems. “I don't want you to burn my hair anymore tonight.”_ _

__I expect Mink to act confused, to remind me that he already stopped, but instead he asks, “What do you want?”_ _

__I shrug. The rest of it stands, doesn't it? Hurt me, destroy me, get me out of here. Koujaku wouldn't have been so deliberate about administering pain. He also wouldn't have stopped._ _

__Then, suddenly, I have my answer. “Do what you want with me.”_ _

__He doesn't say anything for a while. That's the core of Mink that Aoba couldn't wrap his brain around. I'm easy to figure out, I just want to use and be used. Mink, on the other hand, doesn't want anything at all. He no longer needs or wants to use anyone, now that his one mission is complete. He's found reason enough not to die, but he has nothing to live for just yet._ _

__I look at him, but his face is as hard and emotionless as ever. So I get in his lap again._ _

__His arms come around me almost automatically. I can't figure out if it's a reflex or if it means he wanted this. I brush my thumb over the clotting wounds I gave him. “What were you thinking on that first night out here, when you fucked me?”_ _

__His eyes meet mine. Intimidating, pale, new, golden eyes. He watches me like he doesn't know what I'm planning, but he moves with me, lets me fit onto him. “I wanted to know why you'd traveled so far. And what you'd done with Aoba.”_ _

__I try kissing him like I once kissed Koujaku. Sweetly, like he's a beloved pet you can still trust to bite you, no matter how precious you act. Like he can see right through you. I brush Mink's hair from his face and kiss his temple, then the corner of his mouth. “And you didn't think to just go 'why did you come here, and what did you do to Aoba'?”_ _

__“Would you have answered?”_ _

__I think about it. “No.”_ _

__Mink gives me a pointed look, which I ignore. Instead I take his hand, the one I bit earlier, and lick his fingers to wet them as well as I can. It will hurt a little when he's inside me, and a little is good for right now. I move his hand to where I want it, and he understands._ _

__While Mink fingers me, I twist and turn to get him in deeper, and I say, “So you fucked me to get information out of me.”_ _

__Instead of answering me, he lifts me up higher to bite at my neck and my throat, where his hands have left deep but invisible bruises. It's just the right kind of pain for now, just short of a knife slicing in. He's doing what I want, playing right into my hand._ _

__“But you still didn't get what you wanted,” I add._ _

__“I did,” Mink says._ _

__Before I can ask, he's pressing up into me. He stops halfway, letting me get used to it. Which isn't so bad, as sore as I am inside._ _

__I rest my head on his shoulder, on the side of his neck I haven't yet bitten. His hands are both sliding slowly up my hips. I ask, “Is this what you wanted?”_ _

__He doesn't answer. He just holds me by my waist and moves me, carefully, deliberately, up and down. Our skin rubs together, sticks together from the salt of our sweat, but doesn't tear. It just pulls on us, pleasantly. The air feels cool on my skin again, as if the breeze from earlier has stirred back up, which makes the heat of Mink all the more wonderful. I tighten around his tip and cause him to stifle a groan._ _

__I try again, saying the same thing a different way. “Do you like it best gentle, like this?”_ _

__He says nothing. I nip the flesh of his throat softly, then sit up tall, so I'm looking down at him. I can see, when I lean back from him, the place where our bodies join. The hard muscles of his legs strain at his warm brown skin. His eyes are tired and wanting, little more, but I read his answer in them anyway: _I don't know. _____

____Well, he can have his tenderness, but it won't keep me from wanting shreds of his skin between my teeth. I push against him, ride him, setting a harder, faster pace. One of his hands should stay at my hip to steady me, but the other I move from there to my mouth, where my teeth graze it, to the back of my neck, where I push the fingers up into my hair. Every strand throbs with a memory of sharp stripping pain, but I can never get enough, not really. I tell him, “Pull.”_ _ _ _

____With nearly all of my hair wrapped into his strong fist, with a firm and close grip the way I like it best, Mink obeys me. I arch my back when he pulls hard, and I sink down low on him when he lets up. I get sweet with him again, so he'll let me hurt him without stopping, when it comes to that. I stroke his hair softly, even when I'm gasping from his grasp on mine. I brush my thumb over his lips. He parts them, but he doesn't bite._ _ _ _

____I feel like the forest is watching us, closing in on us. It's colder now, and I think the sun is starting to rise. It's blue overhead. The clouds have cleared, and I can see the distant white wink of stars. The trees are a row of tall dark figures, their shadows smaller, held close to them. I kiss his mouth as I slide up the length of him, dare to catch his lip in my teeth, and he moves his hand from my hip. He touches my cock instead, rubbing it, slipping his fingers over the wet tip._ _ _ _

____“Please,” I beg him. The words spill from me against my will. Have I ever asked for anything like this before? I just want him closer. “Don't stop, touch me like that, get me off.”_ _ _ _

____Steady, calm, constant pressure on my hair. I push a burned end of it into his mouth and he sucks, reawakening the ache. I lean into him, changing the angle, though he's so big it hardly matters. The breeze tugs the last flower out from behind my ear, still too early in the day for me to see if it will bloom again. In the first light, I can still see the ghost of pale firesmoke hanging in the air._ _ _ _

____Mink tightens his hand around me and moves with an urgent pace that his hips match. I don't know if he's ready to come or trying to outrun daylight. I kiss him deep, swirl my tongue around his, taste my own blood on him, thrust into his hand. I dare to bite down hard, but it's my own lip that splits open again. Mink could rip me away from his mouth by my hair, but he doesn't._ _ _ _

____I come into his hand, quick and harsh, with more pain-edged relief than pleasure. My body tries to give out, but Mink holds me up and keeps me moving, smearing my own come across me from my hips to my waist. He's breathing hard, chest heaving, as the new sun shines through the treetops and dapples his face with spots of light. That distance, that heavy numbness, is starting to overtake me again; the lingering ache in my hair and inside me is all that feels real._ _ _ _

____Slim icy needles of rain start to fall, despite the cloudless sky. I lean back and blink into the sun, feel drops of water hit my cheeks then splash and sparkle in my eyelashes, and Mink leans with me, forehead on my jaw, mouth clamping down to open a tiny wound at my throat. The pain breaks through the barrier coming down around me, and it makes me moan for him, moan his name. “Ah – Mink!”_ _ _ _

____I hardly feel it when he comes, but I hear him gasp out something in a language I don't know. A curse or a prayer, I'll take either. I hold him, cup his face in my hands, feel the water run down his forehead. I don't, right now, smell cinnamon. Only new forest growth and sweat._ _ _ _

____“Stay in me,” I tell him. I don't want to stop feeling full of him, not if he goes soft, not if the ground beneath us turns to mud with the rain. Never._ _ _ _

____So we stay there, tangled together in the web of my damp hair, until the sun's fully up and the world fades away._ _ _ _


	4. Chapter 4

I wake to the sound of rain on the cabin window.

I'm warm and dry in Mink's guestroom bed, nude but wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets. My head aches, and I feel weak and shaky when I sit up too fast, but other than that I'm unhurt. I have no unhealed wounds on my skin or my hair.

Mink sits slouched in a chair beside the bed, fast asleep. There's a pair of reading glasses on the nightstand, and an open book is perched on the very edge of his lap. Without thinking, I take it from him and mark his place with the back flap of the book jacket, then set it down nearby.

Through the open curtains I can see the forest and mountains cloaked in a veil of gray. I can't remember if there was a real fire here or not, but it seems unlikely during the wet season. I slip out of bed, let my legs adjust to standing upright again, and lean on the windowsill for a while to listen to the rain fall. There's a moth pressed flat enough against the outside screen that it's managed to stay safe and dry, and I'm happy for it. 

_This isn't all me,_ I think. But it isn't Aoba holding me back either, and for now, that's good enough.

A thin brown bathrobe hangs on a hook near the door. It must belong to Mink, because the belt loops fall past my hips and the hem drags the floor. I put it on anyway and go out to find the bathroom, stepping softly so the floors won't creak and wake Mink.

I don't take a bath, but I clean up as well as I can. Soreness settles into me, and I imagine I must have been in bed for days on end. When I glance at myself in the mirror, I'm suddenly shy. I want to look away, even though I still look like myself: white eyes, white hair, pinkish scars curling up my shoulders and neck, stopping short of my blank white face.

I comb through my hair with my fingers, hoping to shake loose a petal or catch sight of a strand burned brown, but there's nothing. Then I glance at the mirror again, like I think my reflection might have spied on me after I looked away.

“Aoba?” I say.

My mouth moves again. “I'm here.”

The voice is mine, but it comes out sleepy and slow, like Aoba is barely awake. I smile at my reflection. Because he's there, because he's subdued.

In the living room, Tori sleeps on his perch. He's in a different body, I notice now. He looks almost the same, but newer and bigger. I touch his soft wing feathers and think of Ren. I can't ever go back home to get him, I don't think. It would be foolish anyway. But Ren used to be a comfort to me, and I'm glad that he's safe with Tae.

I find a pitcher of water in the kitchen and drink straight from it. At first the cold of it hits hard and makes me feel nauseous, but I get used to it quickly and finish a third of it at once. My headache fades away more with each long sip.

“You shouldn't do that,” Mink says.

I jump in surprise and try not to spill too much water down my front. Mink's there filling the doorway, frowning slightly. He adds, “You could still be contagious.”

I don't apologize, but I let him take the pitcher from me, and he doesn't say any more about it.

“How long was I asleep?” I ask.

“Five days. You were conscious for some of it, but it's unsurprising that you don't remember.”

I prod around for Aoba in hopes of making him get the words out, some permutation of _thank you for taking care of us, thank you for helping us live,_ but he won't turn up.

Mink is sorting through a cabinet now, removing items one by one. A sack full of sugar, another of coffee beans, a glass jar of oats. He stops abruptly and exits the room, and I wonder if I'm supposed to figure out how to cook everything he's laid out. I peek into the pantry and see nothing that looks instant or resembles a brand name. It's strange to be here in the place where Mink prepares his own meals, when I've spent the last few weeks eating whatever the gas station nearest to my path had to sell. Before that I could raid the stores in the kitchen at Oval Tower for anything I wanted, and before that, of course, I had Tae.

Mink returns to the room before long and doesn't comment on the way I'm poking through his boxes and jars. “There's a bath ready for you. You should go while I make breakfast.”

I want to thank him, and I also want to defy him and flee out into the rain. Instead I nod, and let myself be uneasily complacent, for now. I can always break out later.

Tori's awake when I pass him again. “Morning, Aoba,” he calls. “Feeling better?”

I don't know how to respond to that. I look at his small beady eyes and try to picture the machine beneath. How does he know who I am? Is he right? I nod again, and I go to the bath.

Mink's soap smells like orange peels and strong black tea. I wonder how his natural scent is strong enough to drown it out. It feels good to wash my hair in the steaming water – I always have liked the way that my hair, when it's long, gets so weighed down when wet that it aches. But I can't stop glancing at the door, and at first I think it's because I don't have a plan of escape. I don't know where my clothes and shoes are, or even if they're still able to be worn. The rain shows no sign of letting up, and I don't know where exactly I am, though I could find my way back to the road if I could find that forest clearing.

After a while, though, it occurs to me that I keep looking at the door because I'm waiting for Mink.

I don't know what happened to my mind while I was sick. It could be that Mink and I did at least exchange some of the words I remember, but more likely the whole lot of it was a hallucination. All Mink knows is that I came here, fucked him once, then got sick and took up space in his bed.

And that I'm not Aoba.

I take as long as I can in the bath, but Mink doesn't come.

Holding Mink's robe shut at the chest, I return to the kitchen. He and Tori are both missing, and I don't seek them out. There's a bowl of hot cinnamon-sprinkled oats on the table, along with a cup of coffee. I'm afraid they'll have milk added – not that I care, but Aoba's somewhere around – but both are free of milk and extra sweet.

I'm a few bites in when I hear the door swing open. Mink comes into the kitchen with Tori on his shoulder and potted plants balanced in both arms. The air fills with the scent of soil, and for a moment I let myself remember holding onto Mink under the rain just before I woke up.

Then I watch, vaguely mystified, as Mink deposits the plants in the kitchen sink and heads out to collect more. When he's out of sight I drift to the sink and peer down at clusters of rain-speckled leaves that seem almost crisp and juicy in their lushness. Most of them are strong-smelling herbs with spiked vines or dozens of seed pods, but there are flowers, too. From under the rosemary I unearth a pot of morning glories in full bloom. I've never seen them unfolded like this, so it surprises me to see that the wide blue petals fade to white in the center. I reach out to pluck one from its stem.

“Don't,” Mink says. He takes the pot from me and sets it down. He still has an armful of flowers, but he hesitates, holds onto them while he touches the back of one hand to my forehead. He must find me free of fever, because he says, “Sit down and eat your food.”

And I do. I don't know why. Even Aoba would protest, resist. Aoba had – has – an edge to him, and I don't think he learned it from me. For now, I don't know who I am or how to act, or why I feel like a ghost, like I might have died after all.

The next time Mink leaves, Tori stays behind. He curls his talons around the arm of the chair beside me. “Mink's bringing in the plants so they don't get waterlogged,” he explains.

Now he's the chatty type? I don't know why Mink puts up with it. “I see, Tori.”

“I have a new name now. Mink gave it to me.” He takes off, swoops in circles around the kitchen, showing off. Waiting for me to ask what his name is now, maybe, but I don't. He lands again and preens. “It's Huracan. Nice, huh?”

Strange that he would do that. “Mink must have changed a lot lately.”

Tori – Huracan – scans me with those tiny eyes, translating me into a stream of information that his thought circuits can comprehend. 

“So have you, Aoba,” he says. Then he glides after Mink, out into the rain.

 _Aoba,_ I think frantically, then cut myself off. I don't know why I'm calling for him.

Impulsively, probably stupidly, I stage the only resistance I possibly can. I go back to the sink and grab at the flowers I want – and Mink catches my hand.

“You,” I say, “are _so quiet_ , for someone so _big_ -”

He sighs and lets me go, nudging me toward my chair. Then he takes a knife and leans over the sink, and when he turns around he holds a morning glory between two fingers, its stem long and cleanly clipped.

He doesn't give it to me, though. He leads me to the bathroom and stands me in front of the mirror while he twists a section of my hair into a thin braid, with more expertise than I'd have thought his big hands would allow. He twines the flower stem through the braid and secures it at the bottom with a narrow strip of leather he takes from his own hair. 

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. He's not going to light a candle, not going to force me into the fire.

When he stands back to let me admire his work, I don't want to at first. It reminds me of Koujaku, who never did get to cut my hair. Aoba's hair, our hair. I like it long, though, and what Mink has done looks pretty. _Aoba, what do you think?_

I can't tell for sure, but I get the vague idea that his answer is something like, _it'd look better on blue than on white._

I make a sour face, and in the mirror I can see Mink's eyebrow raise. Then I laugh, because he's out of the loop. Mink's out of the loop, and I'm in.

“It's not what you wanted?”

He sounds so ridiculously eager that I almost wonder why I ever worried that he wouldn't come back to us, to me, at heart. “You've just made me want to pick the rest of your plants clean.”

“Do that, and you can hike out in the rain to transplant a new one.”

“I'd get sick again.”

“That reminds me.” Mink bends down to take something from under the sink. It's not one of his homemade concoctions this time, just a tube of antibiotic cream. “I've kept your wounds as clean as I can, but it will be harder for you to beat another infection.”

I try to take it from him, but he shakes his head and pushes past me to wash and dry his hands. He squeezes a line of the cream onto his thumb. “I don't trust you to be thorough.”

“You probably shouldn't.” Aoba's shyness gets in the way at first, so I guide Mink's hand to the high shallow scars on my neck.

Most of the wounds there healed long ago, so Mink only rubs cream into a few. He touches me with the slightest possible pressure, which helps Aoba want to yield to him. “I shouldn't trust you at all?”

“Not with myself,” I concede, dropping the shoulders of the baggy bathrobe down to my elbows to give Mink more room to work.

“Or with my flowers, it seems.” He sighs heavily, coffee on his breath, and I laugh.

When Mink reaches my lowest few ribs, where some of the deepest and most recent wounds are, I let the robe fall to my feet and climb on the counter to sit. To keep Aoba from feeling exposed, I decide to go on one of those curious tangents he gets so fond of. It's a delicate dance, keeping Aoba and Mink in balance. “What do you use the flowers for? And the other plants.”

“Seasonings, medicines, teas. Some attract or repel certain insects. Others have parts that can be ground to make dyes.” He fits his fingertip into a series of deep indentations on my left side, where claws hit bone. It's scabbed over, but deep down, it still aches.

Through gritted teeth, I ask, “Family recipes?”

“More cultural than family. But some of those, too.”

I turn halfway to let him get at a gash that runs over the base of my spine. It hurts more when I can't see what he's doing, feels like he's letting his nails open it back up. “S-so is that what you do for...a job, or whatever?”

Mink pauses, and even with my back turned to him, I can practically feel his frown. He answers, though. “No. Though it can be a useful skill to trade.”

I can't take it like this anymore. _Sorry,_ I think, and nudge Aoba into the shadows. I arch unsteadily against Mink's hand, driving his fingernails into the wound. In a softer, lower voice than I've been using, I say, “It would be easy to hurt me right now, if that's what you wanted.”

He stays stoic. “This is meant to protect you.”

I twist around again and pull my legs up, feet on the rim of the sink, thighs splayed to reveal jagged wounds cut through my body's tenderest parts. I'm starting to get hard at the thought of Mink touching me there, and I know he will see. “There's more than one way to protect a person.”

He responds with a grunt and ignores me, instead focusing on the reddened tooth-gouged ruts that weep clear fluid when I walk too far. One of them, high up, is swollen and blistered. Is that where the infection sparked and spread? Mink soothes it with his hand, makes the swelling go down. He moves up to the scars at the base of my cock without reacting at all, but I shiver.

I let my hand curve over my thigh and press a finger to the blister, squeezing it empty. The pain is sharp, focused, and good. My front is exposed to Mink, my back pressed to his cold bathroom mirror, and a moan escapes my mouth before I'm aware of it.

Mink pushes my fingers away and washes the emptied blister with soap and water. He pats it dry with a soft cloth. I let him. After that, he coats it again with the antibiotic medicine. “You should have told me you were going to do that.”

“I didn't know,” I say flippantly, honestly.

He looks at me. Then looks away, to the muscle-deep, still-healing slice taken out of my right calf. I hadn't realized I was so deeply hurt, in so many places. “You need to leave these alone. Let yourself heal.”

“I will,” I lie.

Even without me spurring it on, the pain Mink inflicts is nice enough to force a moan out of me. He takes one ankle in his hand, then the next, lifting them carefully. I feel the edges of my skin, partly healed into two hard lips that should have been stitched back together, part and take Mink's medicated fingertips in. I don't squirm more than I need to, but Mink holds me down anyway, with a hand braced just above my knee. Cuts to the bone, fractures to my smallest toes; Mink sorts it all out while I try to coax his hand farther up my leg.

“Be patient,” he says.

“I'm not a good patient.”

“I see that.”

At last, nothing's left but the bite on my hand. My kiss from Koujaku, the one memento I have of him. I try to hide it at first, tucking it behind my back or leaning on it like I'm resting my head, but Mink doesn't fall for it. “That one, too. It's had your mouth all over it.”

I want to cooperate, I really do, but I slide off the counter and back away from him, shaking my head.

“It will still scar just as deeply after I treat it.” He's trying to comfort me. It almost works. 

That's not the problem, of course. It's a secret, my secret place. It's a place on me that only Koujaku was ever meant to touch. Now that I've left him, destroyed him, don't I owe him this much?  
Mink says, “Give it to me if you don't want to hurt Aoba even more.”

I'm helpless to that. I'm holding Aoba down in half-consciousness, so I can hurt without him having to feel, but I can sense his distant shock at the state of our body. He thinks faintly, _you did this to me?_

 _I did this to us,_ I confirm.

Mink takes my hand when I let my guard down, though he glances at my face to make sure I'm at least part willing. And when I don't yell or pull away, he brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it.

His chapped lips press at the edges of the hollow. His tongue slides in to explore the pearly, shell-like skin, every scalloped crevice of it. I feel his breath hot on my wrist. I let out a sound that's close to a whimper, and I seize his free hand to push it between my legs.

He doesn't resist. He squeezes me, palms my cock, lets his fingers sprawl across the warm place at the tops of my thighs. And he kisses my bite, hard and hungry, like he's kissing Koujaku, with me and Aoba pressed between them.

“Fuck me,” I whisper, as Aoba thinks, much more gently, _take me to bed_. Mink's having none of that, though. He brings a thumb to the corner of my eye, as if to soothe it. I don't know why, except that my eyes feel tense and swollen, and they pulse like a headache when I think of Koujaku. 

If he were here, he'd be jealous and critical. If he were here, he'd kiss my mouth and tear even more deeply into the marks he's made. If he were here he would sweep me off my feet, but he's not here, and I am why he's not here, and instead, Mink is washing my wound again.

I let him clean and disinfect it. I let him wrap it, along with the other deepest cuts, in long strips of sterile gauze. I let him dab at my face with tissue and straighten the tie on my braid, and then I'm done letting him do things. I wrap my arms around his neck and legs around his waist, lift myself up, and bite into the meat of his shoulder, just above his chest.

His body jerks. I think I can see his willpower kicks in, to keep his instinct from letting him hit me. He's not so different than me and Aoba in that way. 

“Don't hold back,” I murmur, and smile against the dents I've left in his skin. 

He doesn't hit me, but he grunts in distaste, and he lets one of his big hands slide up under my ass to support me while he carries me all the way to his bedroom, leaving gauze and petals and feathers in our wake. 

From somewhere far off, Aoba thinks, _That's a lot better than being hit._

 _It's almost as good,_ I correct.

 

* * *

 

Mink's room is identical to the one I've been sleeping in, except it's less dusty, and there's a tall heap of books on the nightstand. The spines are leather, and the gold-printed titles form words in a language I can't read. 

He eases me onto the bed, placing my head on the single firm pillow, but I twist away until I'm upside down. I want to be able to gaze out the window while Mink has his way with me. I want him – I'm hard, I begged for this – but I also need to see the rain soak into the earth. I've spent too much time in the dark, held at a distance from Aoba's sight and skin with nothing but my own thoughts for company. The sheet of gray rain grounds me.

For a while, Mink watches me watch the rain. I doubt he understands what it means to me, but he doesn't ask and doesn't make me move. I let my hand drift down to play with myself; I roll my hips and suck on my fingers, and I feel his eyes moving over me. I look away from the rain long enough to offer him a smile.

Mink sits beside me. His weight makes the bed dip in the center. I turn to take his hands and put them on me, but he's facing away from me, looking for something in the nightstand drawer.

He comes up with an unlabeled jar the size of his palm. I wonder if it's more homemade medicine, then the obvious answer comes to me. I cover my mouth to stifle a laugh. After all we've done together, in fever-fueled dreams and in reality, he's bothering to use lube on me this time?

When he opens the lid, a scent like honey fills the room. I roll onto my side and press myself against Mink's back, wrapping around him to get a better look. The jar is nearly full of thick translucent cream, and Aoba is present enough to ask me to _please_ not make a remark about how little action Mink must see out here. I heed his advice. That sort of comment won't get Mink on top of me any faster.

Mink dips his thumb into the jar and brushes it across my lips. It feels good on the dry skin there, but the heavy, sweet scent of the stuff is almost unbearable. I take his thumb into my mouth and lick it clean. The cream melts on my tongue and warms me from the inside out; it tastes just as sugared, honeyed, and rich as it smells.

I reach for the jar to take more. “You should've fed me _that_ for breakfast.”

“In the spring, you can make your own batch to eat.” He pulls it out of my reach, then lets me have another taste from his fingertips. He's frowning, but I think I can see his eyes smile.

I lie on my back, licking my lips. I wonder if he'll let me eat more of it off of him later, after he's fucked me. I spread my legs apart, pull my knees up, and touch the flower braided into my hair to make sure it's still there, still open. It's here; I'm here beneath the wooden rafters, as a mountain storm sweeps through. Does Mink really think I'll be here in the spring?

He takes his time oiling up his hands. I'm ready for his fingers in me, or tongue or cock or anything at all, but he reaches for one of my legs first and begins to rub the tension out of it, from the ankle up. I want to complain, but it's _good_. Even after the days I've spent in bed, my legs haven't fully recovered from the weeks of walking I put them through. Mink's fingers are strong and controlled enough to draw the soreness from me and make me soft and flexible again.

The scented cream melts into me with the heat of Mink's hands. Out the window, through the rain, the sun shines with a steady white burn. I'm tensing my thighs and twisting my hips against the worn blanket beneath me, but Mink won't touch anywhere higher than my knees. I wonder if this is his revenge for being made to wait so long the last time we fucked – but then again, I don't know that the last time really happened at all.

Finally he leans over me, but not to take me yet. He sits across my hips, letting the bed bear his weight, and brings his hands down to rub my shoulders. I squirm against the rough fabric of his jeans and reach up to tug at his shirt, but he gently pushes me flat against the bed.

I look up into his eyes, which are still the strange bright shade of gold I first saw in my dream. Was that another premonition, or just a detail my dazed mind caught on while he was tending to me? There's a clarity to them, and a hint of heat. Like the honey-scented cream; like the sun. I ask him, “What happened to your eyes?”

He blinks. The lines of his face hardly ever seem to move, and his skin tone conceals a flush, but there's something softer about him up close, where the fringe of his lashes and the white scars on his chin can be seen. 

“I could ask you the same,” he says, but after a pause he goes on. His hands don't ease up on my shoulders. “I wore contact lenses in Midorijima. To hide my identity, among other reasons. When I realized you were coming this way, I put them in to keep from revealing more than necessary to you.”

I slip a hand under his shirt to rest against his waist. “But now you've decided to show yourself more completely?”

He doesn't break eye contact, but he doesn't answer either. Instead, he squeezes my shoulders and says, “You're not that tense here. You stand up much straighter than Aoba. That's good.”

“It's good to have pride?”

“It's good to have decent posture.” 

Anxiously, I glance out at the rain. I move my hand from Mink's waist to touch my flower, then Koujaku's bite. Talisman after talisman, to prove I'm still here. I may have the better posture, but at least Aoba lacks these nervous tics.

Mink stops massaging me suddenly, instead cupping the side of my face in his palm. Then he looks down at me in a direct and simple way, with no part of him engaged in other distractions. 

I fight the urge to shrink away; I don't know if anything he's done before has ever exposed me so thoroughly. I'd shut Mink out and forfeit the sex my body craves if I were alone. It's Aoba's openness – his willingness to give of himself, which I can't help but feel – that convinces me to let Mink watch my eyes and ask me whatever he will.

But when he speaks, it's not to ask a question of Aoba.

“Do you have a name?” he says. 

I can't read his eyes, but there's an uncertain set to his mouth. He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “Your own name, aside from Aoba.”

I hesitate. _Do I?_

I could give him one of the many words for what I am, what purpose I serve. I could give him my pretty nickname from the time I spent in Oval Tower. I could give him my old Rhyme name, though I'm not sure it suits me any longer. I could ask Mink to name me right now, to put a name to what – apart from Aoba, on my own merit – is still worth wanting.

But the true answer comes to us, and we tell it to Mink in unison. “No. For now, it's just Aoba.”

Mink nods, as if this new information is possible to take in stride. As if I'm not sitting here numbly thinking again and again, _I'm part of him. He says I'm a part of him._

“I'll rephrase, then,” Mink says, returning his hands to my shoulders. “Aoba. It's good that you've learned to stand up straight.”

 

* * *

 

It feels like hours pass before Mink decides that he has prepared me well enough. He has touched every inch of me, pressing carefully around the edges of bandaged wounds. As the rain has slowly calmed from a downpour to a gentle shower, Mink has made me tender, pliant in every way.

He slips out of his clothes and lets them fall to the floor. I remember seeing him in nothing but unzipped pants in my dream, but it's different to have him completely naked and kneeling between my outstretched legs, with his hands urging me to tilt my hips up so he can get his slick fingers inside. I can see each muscle flexing beneath his skin as he moves. He's built sturdily, but with a kind of minimal elegance, as if he were put together by someone who aimed to waste nothing. He's not flawlessly strong all over, though. When he lets himself relax, there are places where he's soft.

I don't let him inside yet. I throw my arms around his neck and pull myself onto him. Just seeing him undressed isn't enough; I want to feel him too. My thighs on his, our fronts pressed together, his cock against mine, between us – I've had Koujaku in this position more times than I can count, but Mink is so different. He wants, but not blindly. He's in control.

I kiss him as I guide his fingers in. I'm open, relaxed, ready for him, but he's startled, like he didn't expect my tongue to slip into his mouth. I hold my teeth back. I clench around him. Nothing about this will be sharp, but if I have my way, neither will it be gentle. I grasp the back of his neck and slide my tongue along the length of his, making him taste me, making him taste the honeyed cream he has rubbed into my skin and my lips. I feel him push his fingers in deeper, relentless, until I've taken them as far as they'll go. He's in me, and in a way, I'm in him too. His body trembles, and I hope he's resisting the urge to slam me down.

I let him go and he breathes in, slow and deep. I ride his hand, moving my hips with a new strength now that he's loosened me up so well, and I find myself wishing he'd put another finger or three in. His eyes flick to mine, then away. I kiss him again, mouth closed, and he responds, kisses back, in a slow, hesitant way that borders on shy.

“Have you never done it like this before?” I shouldn't laugh at him. I haven't, either. Not this gently. I kiss the corner of his mouth, dip down to nuzzle the side of his neck. Warm lips, no claws, no teeth. I'm hot all over, and so is he. “Do you want it?”

He casts his eyes down. I've made him shy. He says, breath hitching, “I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't want it.”

I _do_ laugh now, softly. I force his hand into me. Deeper, deeper, nails scraping me inside, causing a fragile and secret small pain. “Aren't you going to ask if I want it? Both of me?”

Mink gasps as I kiss him again, as I reach between us to rub his cock with a gentle, teasing touch. It's so big it barely fits in my grasp, but I've had it in me before, and I need it again. I like – _we_ like – to be pushed down and filled up. 

I have no right to laugh. I'm gasping too; I can't get a word out without my voice breaking. But I smile, and my smile curves to one side, softly mocking, as I lean in to kiss him once more. I'm pink all over, and his skin has gone darker. “You'll answer, won't you?”

“I can tell that you want it,” he manages.

I hear his words; I hear the rain beating down on the roof, lending us a rhythm to fuck by. I'm wrapped in both. I'm safe. I smirk at Mink, but still I pause long enough to say to the other me, who isn't so far beneath the surface, _Do you want it? Is this okay?_

His answer comes strong, like a moan. _Ah – I want it._

I give it to him. I take it for us. I use all our strength to catch Mink off guard and drag him down with me. I sprawl on my back and he comes down on top. His weight is hard to bear, and his fingernails tear at me before he pulls them out.

“I want it,” I repeat. I'm quiet, so quiet, like the faint sound of the rain on the grassy forest floor. I'm background noise. I'm something that's not human, given voice. And I know that Mink can hear me. “I want it, I _want_ it, take us, _take_ me – ”

I've never been more ready for him to enter me. I don't understand, when he does, how I've taken all of him in before. With the help of the melted cream, it's not too painful to take him, but I feel filled up before he's halfway in. I hiss anyway, in his ear, “Go in deeper.”

I feel my other voice beside my own, backing me up, reinforcing. We're both here on our backs, our legs around Mink, our shared body squirming beneath him. I'm in Aoba, and he is in me, and Mink is in both of us. And when we beg Mink to fuck us harder, we mean it, from the very core of us.

He tries to take some of his weight off me, to balance it instead on his knees, on his hands, but it hardly works. He can't stop touching me. He grips my thighs and forces them up to get me more open, more receptive to him. He strokes my face, kisses my neck, lets the edges of his teeth skim the flesh there. I feel his body flex against me.

I try to touch myself, to sate myself, but Mink pins my arm down with a thumbnail sharp in my wrist. He fits his hand between us instead, swallows me again with his grasp. It seems effortless for him to stroke me in time with his thrusts. I can feel him wanting me, and it makes me choke back a desperate whimper. 

It'll never be enough. Mink will never be enough. The rain, the downpour that floods dried-up rivers and feeds the fields of grass and flowers strewn all down the mountainside; it'll never be enough. I can't get enough. That's what I think, that's what I feel, as he fucks me as hard and deep as he can, with his eyes shut, with his mouth shut, and strokes me with his strong hand, and lets the friction of our bodies work me further into this frantic hungry blush. Mink can get me off ten times over, fuck me until he's too sore to go again, and I will never be sated.

But I'm wrong. I feel him go rigid with the need for release. I tighten around him and he lets out a breath, like he wants to hold off but I'm making him starved for it. I know without asking – he wants me to come first.

So I ask for what I need. I cross my ankles behind his back, pull him in, and ask for it. “Mink. Mm – _Mink_. Say my name.”

He looks at me. Dips his head down to taste my mouth, my neck, my chest. The hand braced by my head reaches out to run through my hair in long strokes, never catching or pulling, just caressing, twirling his finger around the thin braid, as though he knows this is the easiest way to send a shock of pleasure through me to my toes. He's given up on keeping his weight off me, and I am breathless.

“ _Aoba,_ ” he says. It comes out in a helpless shudder. Just that word, just my name, as though it's a vow that can claim me. He gasps it out over and over as he keeps me down with the steady pressure of his body and hands. “Aoba, Aoba, _Aoba_ \- ”

I cut him off with a low rising moan, the kind that bursts out when you're waking from a dream and don't yet know who or where you are. I come clasped tightly in his hand, heat surrounding me. I can feel the orgasm Mink has given me in every part of my body, pulsing through each muscle, penetrating me to the bone.

He catches my lip in his teeth, a quick vicious kiss, and keeps going. He doesn't let up on my cock, even when I grow so sensitive that I can't help but writhe uselessly against him. I hold onto him, ride it out in the shadow of his body, press tight around him, until my pain-edged urgency fades to the feeling of having been pleasurably, thoroughly used.

Mink wraps himself around me when he comes. With his chest to mine, his arms against my arms, I can feel him turn rigid and tense all over. He's hot to the touch and hotter inside me. I clutch at him and whimper as a memory of a dream of fire flashes through my mind, but I know not to be scared. I am Aoba, Mink is with me, and I will never be caught in the dark again. 

Mink shakily lowers himself to lie on me. With each breath he draws in, his ribs press into mine, between mine, like our flesh is parting to twine. Tentatively, I pet his hair and kiss the sweat from his forehead. He settles his face into my neck and takes my hand. And at last, for a while, he rests.

 

* * *

 

Before Mink sleeps, he takes the flower from my hair and sets it on the nightstand. The petals are no longer perfectly crisp, but they're still pretty. I don't want them to end up crushed beneath us.

We clean up as little as we can. We smell like sex, honey, cinnamon, and rain, and I want to keep that for as long as possible. In the bathroom, Mink stands behind me when I look in the mirror. He holds me to him, lets me see what we look like together, nude and flushed with sated lust, with his arm around my waist and his chin on top of my head. I meet his reflection's eyes, trying to silently ask: _Will it be this way for us, from now on?_ Both parts of me want to know, but if Mink understands the question, he doesn't answer.

Mink asks if he can close the bedroom curtains to block out the sun. The rain has died down, so I nod. I wonder if the moth that sought shelter against the other room's window has weathered the storm and flown away freely, but I don't go to check.

I sink into bed, curling close against the wall. I feel Mink sit behind me. He puts a hand on my shoulder and just says, “Aoba.”

I know what he's leaving unspoken. _Aoba, are you all right? Was that okay, was it gentle enough? Are you afraid of me?_

Maybe even, _Should I be afraid of you?_

I smile at him over my shoulder. “Come to bed, okay?”

He settles in beside me, fitting against me like a second skin. He kisses my temple, twirls a lock of my hair between two fingers, drapes an arm over me, and pulls the blanket to our shoulders. I feel his soft cock, still so big, at the small of my back. Part of me wants more of him while I can get it; the other part reminds me that there will be more later, tomorrow. Forever, even.

Within moments, Mink is snoring quietly. The other part of me, the first Aoba, fades too, settling into a sort of unconsciousness. Later on, I'll teach him how to regain the strength I've forced out of him well enough that he'll be able to wake and sleep with our body, never causing us to unmeld.

For now, though, I'm happy to have my thoughts to myself for a while. This could be the last time, or close to it.

Mink's even breath tickles my hair. I stare at the knots in the wooden wall in front of me. I listen to the faint buzz of insects waking after the rain, and I feel my body conform to the firm mattress beneath me. I think of every day starting and ending this way. Of being wanted, needed, blended into the self I was meant to be. Of constant reassurance that I belong.

I think of flying through the forest where I do not belong, white hair blazing behind me, mind and body fully engaged in the thrill of the hunt. And I think I'm ready to give that up.

I prod at Aoba, wondering if he can hear me, but he's silent.

I think of the years he spent holding me down. He was scared, and he had every right to be. He had no way to know that I belonged. Then I think of how I flinch when he pushes past me and speaks alone, the way he flinches when Mink raises a hand to him. I wonder if welcoming him back in so soon makes me weak.

I hold Mink's hand tightly, lift it to kiss the back of it. And I think of how many times he would have killed me swiftly, without mercy, if I hadn't been carrying Aoba as an unwilling passenger. No amount of sweet, welcoming words can erase that, ever.

But I close my eyes. I lace my fingers through Mink's and think of Koujaku lying with blank lifeless eyes open wide. Koujaku, pinned under glass. I choke back a sob that I half hope Mink will wake and notice.

I will grow hungry here. No matter how often I am told that I'm wanted, there will be nights when I lie awake and alone, craving destruction, ready to scream for my desperation to tear and to bleed.

I pull my bandage back with my teeth and run my tongue along the familiar edge of Koujaku's wound.

I'll unfold for them. I'll lie vulnerable on my back. I will _try_. I'll reintegrate, I'll forget I ever had Scrap. I'll come screaming into Mink's hands or mouth every night and let Aoba bear the brunt of the pleasure. I will learn to bandage my cuts, to clip flowers cautiously at their stems, to shut the curtains on the falling rain. To ask permission before scratching, biting, fucking, giving in. 

I'll thank them, god will I thank them, for redeeming me, for letting me come home. But I will not forget that once, I existed alone.

And I will not forget how to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first work of fanfiction I've shared widely in a very long time, so if I've neglected any standard conventions or forgotten any important tags, you're more than welcome to point that out.
> 
> [known](http://archiveofourown.org/users/known) was my excellent and encouraging beta for this fic. I didn't take 100% of his advice, but I do take credit for 100% of any errors!
> 
> Thank you so much to each and every one of you who has read this far. I appreciate it.


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